Talk:Alfred C. Finn

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 January 13

Some of the additional references discussed in the Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 January 13 have been added to the article. Bhaktivinode (talk) 17:22, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

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External links modified

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NRHP articles, sources

Hi, i am happy to see this article being developed, and I added about NRHP-listed properties for which Finn is listed as an architect. In some cases Finn may have had a less-than-primary role, such as perhaps for the Autry House where Cram & Ferguson may have been the principal designers. It would probably help to expand and/or create articles about all of the more than 15 NRHP-listed places, in order to clarify Finn's role for each of them. NRHP nomination documents are probably available online for all of them, although it is kind of cumbersome to get access to them. See wp:NRHPHELP#Texas for advice on getting to those sources.

Also I think I see there are some sources in the Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 January 13 which have not yet been used in this article. --doncram 15:38, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

doncram,

Thanks for jumping in to make some needed edits. I have not been editing for awhile. As a result, I have forgotten much of the scripting language and the wiki-style manual. And too often I have found myself looking at content where I can make an incremental improvement while not being capable of making the article as good as it could be.

I am not sure when I will be able to work on this article again, but when i do, I will take at look at the tips you provided.

Thanks, again.

Oldsanfelipe (talk) 16:08, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

No, thank you. I have confidence that incremental contributions add up, and I am really glad you're contributing. And we can't be too hard on ourselves for not doing everything we could do. I would do more now at the linked NRHP articles, but I really am irked by slow loading and the clunky National Archives Catalog interface to get to Texas NRHP nomination documents (covered in that wp:NRHPHELP link), so I tend towards contributing in other U.S. state areas where the NRHP documents are more easily accessible. This Finn article is significantly better for readers now than it was yesterday, say, IMHO, and it is better set up for other editors to continue to contribute. So, yay! :) --doncram 17:35, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

James L. Autry House(s)

There are two buildings in Houston called the "James L. Autry House." No wonder why I was so confused! The first corresponds to the article James L. Autry House, a community building at Rice University, built in 1921 by Cram and Ferguson. I can find no association of this facility with Alfred C. Finn. A second James L. Autry House has no Wikipedia page, and may not merit one. This second Autry House was built as a private residence for Autry in 1912 by Sanguinet & Staats, and located at Courtlandt Place, Houston. Finn was definitely employed with Sanguinet & Staats in 1912, but I cannot determine whether this was at their main office in Fort Worth, or if he had already transferred to the Houston office. {{{1}}}Of course, being in Fort Worth would not have precluded him from design work in Houston. So it's possible that Finn collaborated architecturally on this project, but I don't recall seeing credit given to him directly. I am not certain, but I am inclined to credit Sanguinet & Staats for this one, but not Finn.

I created a disambiguation hat note at James L. Autry House mentioning the James L. Autry House at Courtlandt Place. One factor that makes writing about architects a challenge is the collaborations which were often involved. Second, what counts as the design part of architecture? So there is much gray area. My goal, as I have time, is to migrate the information from the bottom of the article to the article's body and convert it to paragraph form.Oldsanfelipe (talk) 20:54, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Ah, good. I added, in this diff, the NRHP nomination document as a source plus a little bit from it, to the James L. Autry House article, using the NRHP reference number 84000388 which applies to the "Edward Albert Palmer Memorial Chapel and Autry House" listed on the National Register, which is located at 6221 and 6265 Main St., Houston, Texas. This involved my following my own instructions on getting a Texas NRHP document from the National Archives. The source document is not searchable by me, but I don't see anything in it mentioning Alfred C. Finn. Oh, the NRIS database entry is about the James L. Autry House located at 5 Courtlandt Pl., Houston, TX. Its NRHP reference number is 79002953, and its NRIS info lists both Finn and Sanguinet & Staats. This other Autry House is certainly wikipedia-notable for a separate article. The National Archives version of its NRHP nomination document (will require 10 minutes or so to download, i haven't consulted it yet) should provide what's necessary to make sense of the situation now. --doncram 22:01, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

To download the document, you can click on the down-arrow icon just below the blank area on the screen, after you go to that URL. Then you can see progress in megabytes as it downloads and eventually stops, then you can open it on your computer.

Here's a copy-paste-ready complete reference for the Courtlandt Place house:

<ref name=nrhpdoc>{{cite web|url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40972436 |title=National Register of Historic Places Registration: James L. Autry House |publisher=National Archives |author=Marie D. Landon |date=December 19, 1978 | accessdate=October 10, 2017 }} Includes eight photos. ({{NationalArchivesNote}})</ref>

which displays as:

References

That reference text is kind of long with the perhaps too-long canned centralized text it includes, about National Archives downloading, but that may be updated centrally sometime to be shorter.

Anyhow, the document states that the house was "Designed in 1912 by Sanguinet & Staats with Alfred Finn as associate", and mentions that Finn joined the Dallas office of the firm in 1904, was put onto this house in Houston in 1912, joined the Houston office in 1913, and left to go into independent practice by 1915.

It does look to me like there is enough info for a separate article on this house. Perhaps it should be located at James L. Autry House (Courtlandt Place, Houston) (I think that is fairly consistent with your comments) and the other one should be moved to James L. Autry House (Rice University) or to Edward Albert Palmer Memorial Chapel and Autry House. I would prefer the latter so that its article could properly describe the chapel, too. I may go ahead and boldly move that other article. --doncram 18:24, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

call it Rice Hotel or Rice Lofts?

In this article about the architect, I think that the building should be called the Rice Hotel, with possibly a single mention that it is now (or since 20xx has been) known as "Rice Lofts". The historic name was presumably used in all mentions of Alfred Finn in conjunction with it. It is a further thing to possibly argue that the article should be moved to "Rice Hotel", which could be proposed as a wp:RM at its Talk page, but that is not necessary for us to choose to use "Rice Hotel" in this article. --doncram 22:32, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

You raise some interesting questions. When I made the decision to display the internal links as "Rice Hotel," I was thinking about how source material does not always explain the name changes while anyone clicking through the internal link would see the name changes if they read the article until the end. Second, as you noted, Finn's only associations were with the Rice Hotel. One other thing: "Rice Lofts" is no longer the legal name. It first changed to "Post Lofts," and now it is called the "Rice Luxury Apartments." The question is how many readers would be familiar with these newer names?

I proposed moving the Rice Lofts article to Rice Hotel about five years ago. I don't recall who was involved, but others decided against a move. The article is due for a significant update. Perhaps this would be a good time to re-tender the move. Oldsanfelipe (talk) 03:59, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

More of Finn's work

@Doncram:: There are no robust sources for Finn and his work. Unlike John F. Staub, nobody wrote a book about his work. Therefore, additional information will come from books and articles on other subjects. There are other examples of his work which appear neither in the main article nor the list, and should be adding to both as I am reading a Jesse H. Jones biography. I am about to make it to the part about the 1928 Democratic Convention: Finn was a critical player in facilitating the event.

Those spare parts hanging out in the Works section of the main article are waiting for incorporation into the essay, but proves to be more difficult when there are no Wikipedia articles for those examples which would aid my research. So this article is more slow to develop than I wanted.

Any thoughts? Oldsanfelipe (talk) 09:36, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Well, User:Oldsanfelipe, you could plug away at obtaining the NRHP nomination documents for the NRHP-listed individual building and historic districts, and develop the NRHP articles which currently are redlinks or relatively undeveloped articles linked from this Alfred C. Finn article. NRHP documents sometimes/often do include biographies of architects and otherwise extensive information about them. There is relevant advice at wp:NRHPHELPTX on getting the documents either from Texas Historical Commission or from the National Archives. --Doncram (talk) 13:54, 26 September 2018 (UTC)