16 May 2015

H.W. Wachter

It's quite an extravagance but I love getting the volumes of the Buildings of the United States as they are published. The series is published by the Society of Architectural Historians and was inspired by the Buildings of England series by Nikolaus Pevsner and others. The volume I got most recently is Buildings of North Dakota by Steve C. Martens and Ronald H.L.M. Ramsay. You're laughing and the authors do address, in the introduction, the probability that you all don't think about architecture and culture when you think about North Dakota.

North Dakota is one of the few U.S. states that I have not visited so as I was armchair-traveling through the book, I noticed the United Presbyterian Church in Jamestown. I thought that it looked rather like the church I'd seen in Napoleon, Ohio, as I headed West on my March road trip. The North Dakota church was credited to H.W. Wachter, a Toledo architect. I thought "must be" since Napoleon isn't too far from Toledo. According to the Wachter page on Wikipedia, indeed the Napoleon church is also by Wachter. Both churches are Craftsman in style but the North Dakota church's steeple looks a bit clumsier. Meanwhile, I edited the Wikipedia page to include the North Dakota church; I think that's only the second time I've edited something in Wikipedia and the other time was years ago. Maybe I'm ready for one of those wiki marathons.
First Presbyterian Church
Napoleon, Ohio
(H.W. Wachter, architect, 1900-1901)

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