Paul Philippe Cret - Biography

Biography

Born in Lyon, France, Cret was educated at that city's École des Beaux-Arts, then in Paris, where he studied at the Atelier of Jean-Louis Pascal. He came to the United States in 1903 to teach at the University of Pennsylvania. Although settled in America, he happened to be in France at the outbreak of World War I. He enlisted and remained in the French army for the duration, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre and made an officer in the Legion of Honor.

Cret's practice in America began in 1907. His first major commission, designed with Albert Kelsey, was the Pan-American Union Building (now Organization of American States) in Washington DC (1908–10), a breakthrough that led to many war memorials, civic buildings, court houses, and other solid, official structures.

His work through the 1920s was firmly in the Beaux-Arts tradition, but with the radically simplified classical form of the Folger Shakespeare Library (1929–32), he flexibly adopted and applied monumental classical traditions to modernist innovations. (Bertram Goodhue also falls in that category.) Some of Cret's work is remarkably streamlined and forward-thinking, and includes collaborations with sculptors such as Alfred Bottiau and Leon Hermant. In the late 1920s the architect was brought in as design consultant on Fellheimer and Wagner's magnificent Cincinnati Union Terminal (1929–33), the high-water mark of Art Deco style in the United States. He became an American citizen in 1927.

In 1931 the regents of The University of Texas at Austin commissioned Cret to design a master-plan for the campus, and build the Beaux-Art Main Building (1934–37), the university's signature tower. Cret would go on to collaborate on about twenty buildings on the campus.

Cret's contributions to the railroad industry also included the design of the side fluting on the Burlington's Pioneer Zephyr (debuted in 1934) and the Santa Fe's Super Chief (1936) passenger cars.

Cret won the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1938. Ill health forced his resignation from teaching in 1937, and after years of inactivity he died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of heart disease.

Cret's work was displayed in the exhibit, From the Bastille to Broad Street: The Influence of France on Philadelphia Architecture, at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia in 2011. An exhibit of his train designs, All Aboard! Paul P. Cret's Train Designs, will be at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia July 5-August 24, 2012. With a collection of 17,000 drawings and more than 3,000 photographs, The Athenaeum of Philadelphia has the largest archive of Paul P. Cret materials.