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.
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.
He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1890) and belonged to the Architectural League of New York. In 1900, he entered into a partnership with French architect Jules Henri de Sibour, who had earlier worked in his office. The firm continued to use the name "Bruce Price & de Sibour" until 1908, five years after Price's death.
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.
American Surety Building, 100 Broadway, Manhattan, New York City (1894, altered). Architect Herman Lee Meader widened the building and added additional stories in 1922.
↑Scully, Vincent (2003). Modern Architecture and Other Essays. p.150. Venturi, like [Louis] Kahn, starts from the beginning. Again that beginning recalls Wright's, and in Venturi's case derives (I am pleased to say) from the Shingle Style. Wright started in 1889 with a simple gabled house, as a child might draw a house but with a kind of vestigial Palladian motif in the gable. I made a great deal in The Shingle Style of Wright's dependence upon two houses by Bruce Price in this design. So Venturi: he presents an ur-house with a Palladian gesture literally drawn on it.
↑Secrest, Meryle (1992). Frank Lloyd Wright:A Biography. p.117. The Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully believes, for instance, that the house Wright designed for himself in 1889 was closely modeled on two houses built by another architect, Bruce Price, in Tuxedo Park, New York, three or four years before (1885–86). Professor Scully has published photographs to show the similarities between Wright's facade and that of Price's Kent house.
↑Barnes, Christine (1999). Great Lodges of the Canadian Rockies. W.W. West. ISBN0-9653924-2-2.
Graybill, Samuel Hulet, Jr. (May 1957). Bruce Price, American Architect (1824–1903) (PhD dissertation thesis).{{cite thesis}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Scully, Vincent J., Jr. (1971). The Shingle Style and The Stick Style (Reviseded.).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
External links
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