Claude Fayette Bragdon

Architecture and Democracy Claude Fayette Bragdon

Claude Fayette Bragdon architectural designer is a mere milliner in stone, informed in those prevailing architectural fashions of which he himself knows little and cares less. Preoccupied as he is with the building's strength, safety, economy; solving new and staggeringly difficult problems with address and daring, he has scant sympathy with such inconsequent matters as the stylistic purity of a façade, or the profile of a moulding. To the designer, on the other hand, the engineer appears in the light of a subordinate to be used for the promotion of his own ends, or an evil to be endured as an interference with those ends. Claude Fayette Bragdon was an American architect, writer, and stage designer based in Rochester, New York, up to World War I, then in New York City.