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US architect left legacy in China
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HENRY Murphy (1877-1954) came to China in 1914 to design a campus for the Yale-in-China program.
The Yale graduate wandered spellbound for hours through the courtyards of the Forbidden City in Beijing, captivated by the beauty of traditional Chinese architecture. In the following two decades, he devoted himself to architectural designs, mostly for educational institutions, that meshed Western concepts with China’s rich architectural traditions.
“He was an important figure in Chinese modern architectural history,” says Wang Xiaoqian, an associate professor of architectural history at Southeast University in Nanjing.
During his career, Murphy made eight trips to China. The last and longest was from 1931 to 1935.
“He was an American in love with China, Chinese culture and traditional Chinese architecture,” Wang notes. “He used ‘new wine in old bottles’ to describe his design strategy in China. It was not a mere combination of a Western building with a Chinese hat.
“He usually adapted five features — the hanging curved roof, the assigned order, the honest structure, the gorgeous colors and perfect proportions — to express the internal spirit of traditional Chinese architecture. He actually led a renaissance of Chinese classic architecture during the Republic of China era (1912-49).”
After opening a studio on the top floor of today’s Three on the Bund in 1918, Murphy designed or planned famous Chinese universities, including Fudan University in Shanghai, Ginling College for Girls in Nanjing, and Tsinghua University and today’s Peking University in Beijing.
“Most of Murphy’s campus designs reflected his ‘adaptive design’,” says Wang. “In addition to absorbing the essence of Chinese architecture, he also borrowed the architectural axis order of congregation of Chinese palaces and sought harmony with the natural context of a site.”
Despite the classic Chinese elements in his designs, Murphy rendered interiors very modern, with electric lighting, heating systems, hot water, flush toilets and bathtubs.
Under Murphy’s encouragement, the Society of Chinese architects was founded in 1927.
“He trained a group of excellent Chinese modern architects, including Lu Yanzhi, Zhuang Jun and Dong Dayou,” Wang says. “Those three architects graduated from Tsinghua University, went to study in the US and worked as assistants in Murphy’s office or on his China projects. Influenced by Murphy, they all developed and enriched his ‘Chinese renaissance style’ and later designed their own classic works, such as the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing and the Shanghai Municipal Government Building in Yangpu District.”
Murphy also drafted a farsighted urban plan for Nanjing, entitled “The Capital Plan,” at the behest of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government. The plan was thwarted by the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s.
In 1935, Murphy retired to a house he designed in Connecticut, where he later died. He was married four times but had no children.
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