Raymond Hood - Life and Career

Life and Career

Hood was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and was educated at MIT and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After an obscure career, Hood at age 41 won a widely publicized competition for the design of a new building for the Chicago Tribune, and afterwards his practice took off, with Hood becoming touted as one of New York's best architects.

Hood did not consider himself an artist, but saw himself as "manufacturing shelter", writing:

There has been entirely too much talk about the collaboration of architect, painter and sculptor; nowadays, the collaborators are the architects, the engineer, and the plumber. ... Buildings are constructed for certain purposes, and the buildings of tpday are more practical, from the standpoint of the man who is in them then the older buildings. ... We are considering effor and convenience much more than appearance or effect.

Hood's design theory was aligned with that of the Bauhaus, in that he valued utility as beauty:

Beauty is utility, developed in a a manner to which the eye is accustomed by habit, in so far as this development does not detract from its quality of usefullness.

Despite this paen to utility, Hood's designs featured non-utilitarian aspects such as roof gardens, polychromy, and Art Deco ornamentation. As much as Hood might insist that his designs were largely determined by the practicalities of zoning laws and the restraints of economics, each of his major buildings were different enough to suggest that Hood's design artistry was a significanrt factor in the final result.

While a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, Hood met John Mead Howells, with whom he later partnered. Hood frequently employed architectural sculptor Rene Paul Chambellan both for architectural sculptures for his building and to make plasticine models of his projects.

Hood died at age 53 and was interred at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.