Bruce Price (December 12, 1845 – May 29, 1903) was an American architect and an innovator in the Shingle Style. The stark geometry and compact massing of his cottages in Tuxedo Park, New York, influenced Modernist architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Robert Venturi.
He also designed Richardsonian Romanesque institutional buildings, Beaux-Arts mansions, and Manhattan skyscrapers. In Canada, he designed Châteauesque railroad stations and grand hotels for the Canadian Pacific Railway, including Windsor Station in Montreal and Château Frontenac in Quebec City.
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Early life, family and education
Price was born in Cumberland, Maryland, the son of William and Marian Bruce Price. He was first cousin (once removed) to Francis Scott Key. He studied for a short time at Princeton University. He trained for four years of internship with Baltimore architects Niernsee & Neilson (1864–68).
Career
After his internship, Price began his professional work in Baltimore with Ephraim Francis Baldwin as a partner. Following a brief study trip to Europe, he opened an office in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he practiced from 1873 to 1876.
In 1876, he relocated to New York City, working on a series of domestic projects there. These culminated in the design and layout of the exclusive 7,000-acre planned community of Tuxedo Park (1885–86), created by Pierre Lorillard IV. The striking buildings Price designed there, with their severe geometry, compact massing and axial plans, were highly influential in the architectural profession. Eight of Price's houses – including five from Tuxedo Park – were among the one hundred buildings selected for George William Sheldon's landmark survey of American domestic architecture: Artistic Country-Seats (1886–87). The most famous of these, the Pierre Lorillard V cottage ("Cottage G"), though demolished and now known only through photographs, remains an icon of American architecture. Price's daughter wrote in 1911:
In beginning Tuxedo, the architect's idea was to fit buildings with the surrounding woods, and the gate-lodge and keep were built of graystone with as much moss and lichen as possible. The shingled cottages were stained with the color of the woods—russets and grays and dull reds—ugly to the taste of a quarter century later, though this treatment did much to neutralize the newness of the buildings—Old World and tradition-haunted as it looks, it is new, incredibly new.
Among the Manhattan office buildings he designed were the American Surety Building, the St. James Building, the Bank of the Metropolis and the International Bank. He also collaborated with sculptor Daniel Chester French on the Richard Morris Hunt Memorial (1898) in Central Park. He designed a lecture hall and a dormitory at Yale University. His grandest residential commission was Georgian Court, the neo-Georgian estate of George Jay Gould I in Lakewood, New Jersey.
Price invented, patented, and built the parlor bay-window cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Boston and Albany Railroad. This work prompted the Canadian Pacific Railways to consider his portfolio. He designed the Château Frontenac in Quebec City for the Canadian Pacific (arguably the structure Price is most identified with), as well as the first Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta, and many other hotels and stations.
Personal life
In 1871, Price married Josephine Lee, the daughter of a Wilkes-Barre coal baron. They had two children: Emily (Price) Post, who became a novelist and the American authority on etiquette, and William, who died in infancy.
The family resided in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, then settled in New York City in 1877.
Price is buried, along with his wife and son, in Hollenback Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Honors and awards
In 2026, Price was announced as a posthumous inductee into the Luzerne County Arts & Entertainment Hall of Fame.
Selected works
United States
10 East Chase Street, Baltimore, Maryland (c. 1870)
Coryell Apartment Building, 21 East 21st Street, Manhattan, New York (1878)
James Alfred Roosevelt Estate, Cove Neck, New York (1881)
"Cleftstone" (Charles T. How cottage), Bar Harbor, Maine (1881); now Cleftstone Manor Hotel
"Seacroft", Rumson, New Jersey (1881)
"Far Niente" (William B. Rice cottage), Bar Harbor, Maine (1882, demolished 1943)
J. M. Wayne Neff residence, Cincinnati, Ohio (1882, demolished). Listed in Sheldon's Artistic Country-Seats (1886–87)
"Seaverge" (George F. Baker residence), Monmouth Beach, New Jersey (c. 1884, demolished). Listed in Sheldon's Artistic Country-Seats (1886–87)
Cordelia Sterling residence, Stratford, Connecticut (1886). Listed in Sheldon's Artistic Country-Seats (1886–87)
Osborn Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (1887–88, demolished 1926).
Welch Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (1891)
Main Building, Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Connecticut (1892, demolished 1970)
Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, Sharon, Connecticut (1893)
Elizabeth Train Station, Elizabeth, New Jersey (1893–94). Built as Central Railroad of New Jersey Depot
Canada
Windsor Station, Montreal, Quebec (1887–89)
Banff Springs Hotel, Banff National Park, Alberta (1888, demolished 1925). Price's wood-and-shingle hotel was replaced by one of stone and concrete.
James Ross House, Montreal, Quebec (1892); now known as Old Chancellor Day Hall at the McGill University Faculty of Law
Château Frontenac, Quebec City, Quebec (1893)
Place Viger, Montreal, Quebec (1897). A combined railroad station and hotel.