He has never come across a single piece of evidence that Wyman ever worked directly for Hunt prior to Hunt's election to retain Wyman's services as executive architect for the Byrne Building nine months following completion of the Bradbury. John Crandell's claim contradicting McCoy's whole thesis is thoroughly based upon primary source information circa 1890s. A particular question is why did Esther McCoy not consult a single primary source of information other than the allegation of Wyman's relatives, their claim that George had worked for Sumner Hunt. His office buildings took on a heavy solid style and most have subsequently been demolished, whilst the Bradbury building is still much celebrated. He decided to bolster his qualification with an architectural correspondence course, but this seems to have turned him away from using interior light as an architectural element. In the following years, Wyman received numerous commissions for new buildings. However, it was Wyman's only major success. The Bradbury building was met with critical acclaim, including a positive review in Arts and Architecture magazine. The building was completed a year later in 1893 although costs spiralled from $175,000 to $500,000, largely as a result of Bradbury specifying the best quality materials for all aspects of the construction. At first, they had trouble reading the final word, as it was written upside down in relation to the rest of the message.Īs a result, Wyman accepted the commission, and Bradbury was pleased with the drawings and plans for a five-story building at the corner of Broadway and Third Street. Mark Wyman was George's younger brother, who had died at the age of 8. Mark Wyman take the Bradbury building and you will be. Using a planchette, a device similar to a Ouija board, they traced out the message Both he and his wife Belle were Spiritualists, and the couple decided to consult the spirits for guidance. Īccording to a story told by Wyman's grandson, the famous sci-fi figure Forrest J Ackerman, Wyman was troubled by the responsibility of taking on the commission. This narrative has been contested by John Crandell, who claims that the original story was unsubstantiated and relied on a single testimony from Wyman's daughters. With the exception of the fountain, the description neatly fits the interior which Wyman achieved in the Bradbury building just six years after Bellamy's book was published. Around the fountain was a space occupied with chairs and sofas, on which many persons were seated conversing. The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior. Beneath it, in the centre of the hall, a magnificent fountain played, cooling the atmosphere to a delicious freshness with its spray. I was in a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above. It was the first interior of a twentieth-century public building that I had ever beheld, and the spectacle naturally impressed me deeply. In the utopian society of the year 2000 the hero is taken to visit a commercial store: Wyman had been toying with the design of a futuristic building described in Edward Bellamy's science fiction novel and social commentary, Looking Backward: From 2000-1887 (chapter 10). The reasons for this choice are still unclear, but it has been suggested that Bradbury was inspired by some sketches that Wyman had been working on. Disappointed with Hunt's design, Bradbury took the surprising step of asking the young Wyman to design the building, despite the fact that Wyman had no formal qualifications as an architect, and had not previously designed a building. In 1892, Hunt was approached by the mining millionaire Lewis Bradbury to construct a landmark building for a site in downtown Los Angeles. He moved to Los Angeles in 1891 where he worked as a draughtsman in the offices of Sumner Hunt. On leaving school, he was apprenticed in the architects office of his uncle, Luthor Peters. Wyman was born in Dayton, the son of Ellen “Nellie” J. The Bradbury Building, designed by Wyman, as seen in 2005
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