ARCHITECT

Champion of the Gothic.

Ralph Adams Cram was the prime mover behind the revival of Gothic architecture in the 1910s. With his partners at the firm Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson (later Cram and Ferguson), Cram created some of the most influential church and college buildings of his era. Primarily responsible for the overall design and appearance of the firm's buildings, he is widely considered the founder and the foremost exponent of the Eclectic Gothic style in America. While remaining faithful to the pointed arches and delicate stone traceries of English Gothic architecture, this style also borrows from earlier architectural traditions to create structures on the grand scale of newer American buildings. In 1916 a reviewer said of Cram's Gothicism that he "hears its living music, and it is to him not past but eternal."

Proponent of the Spiritual.

Cram was born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, on 16...