James F. O'Gorman

James F. O'Gorman is a professor emeritus in the Wellesley College Department of Art. The first member of the Wellesley College faculty to hold this professorship, he is widely acclaimed as an author, lecturer, editor, consultant, and historian.

Professor O'Gorman received the B.Arch. degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1956 and the M.Arch. from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1961. He earned the Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University in 1966. Before coming to Wellesley in 1975, he taught at Tufts University, Boston University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He has since been a visiting professor at Williams, Columbia, M.I.T., and the University of Delaware. In recent years he has frequently lectured in Italy.

James O'Gorman is the author of The Architecture of the Monastic Library in Italy 1300-1600; The Architecture of Frank Furness; H.H. Richardson: Architectural Forms for an American Society; On the Boards: Drawings by Nineteenth-Century Boston Architects; Three American Architects: Richardson, Sullivan and Wright, 1865-1915; This Other Gloucester; ABC of Architecture (Japanese and Korean language editions, 2000); Living Architecture: A Biography of H.H.Richardson; and Accomplished in All Departments of Art: Hammatt Billings of Boston, 1818-1874. His book, The Landscape and Architecture of Wellesley College, which he co-authored with two colleagues in the Art Department, was published by the college in 2001 in commemoration of its 125th anniversary. Recently, he has contributed a chapter and acted as co-editor to the book, American Architects and Their Books to 1848 and a second volume, 1840-1915. His Connecticut Valley Vernacular: The Vanishing Landscape and Architecture of the New England Tobacco Fields appeared in 2002. He contributed a chapter and edited the book, The Makers of Trinity Church in the City of Boston (2004). In 2006 he published (as co-author) The Maine Perspective: Architectural Drawings, 1800-1980. In 2008 Wesleyan University Press issued his Henry Austin: In Every Variety of Architectural Style, a work supported by a Mellon Emeritus Fellowship.

He is a Life Fellow and an emeritus member of the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Athenaeum; he is a past president of the Society of Architectural Historians and was editor of its Journal. In 2007 he became a Fellow of the Society. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow in 1988–89 and 1996. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Victorian Society in America and editor of its journal, Nineteenth Century. He recently joined the Council of the Society for the Preservation of England Antiquities. In 2003 he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society and in 2005 a member of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. In 2006 he was appointed to the chair of the Commission.

In 1994, James O'Gorman was among the first to receive a Distinguished Alumnus Award from his alma mater, The School of Architecture, Washington University. In 1998 he received The Henry Russell Hitchcock Prize from The Victorian Society in America and The Annual Book Award of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England) for his Living Architecture: A Biography of H.H.Richardson.

In 2009 he became the first two-time winner of the Annual Book Award given by Historic New England for Henry Austin: In Every Variety of Architectural Style.

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Profile last updated: 9/09