"Claude Fayette Bragdon (August 1, 1866–1946) was an American architect, writer and stage designer based in Rochester, NY up to World War I, then in New York City. The designer of Rochester’s New York Central Railroad terminal (1909–13) and Chamber of Commerce (1915–17), as well as many other public buildings and private residences, Bragdon enjoyed a national reputation as an architect working in the progressive tradition associated with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Along with members of the Prairie School and other regional movements, these architects developed new approaches to the planning, design, and ornamentation of buildings that embraced industrial techniques and building types while reaffirming democratic traditions threatened by the rise of urban mass society. In numerous essays and books, Bragdon argued that only an “organic architecture” based on nature could foster democratic community in industrial capitalist society." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Fayette_Bragdon "Claude Bragdon was a first-generation modernist architect, as well as an illustrator, critic, theorist and theater designer. Bragdon practiced architecture in Rochester, NY throughout the Progressive Era. Although his masterpiece, the New York Central Railroad Station, was demolished in the 1960s-70s, the First Universalist Church, the Bevier Memorial Building, the Peterborough Bridge near Toronto, and nearly 100 residences remain today. A prolific and influential writer, Bragdon published more than 20 books and hundreds of articles. He was nationally known for his graphic art, his writing on the fourth dimension, his Song & Light Festivals of 1915-1918, and his role in theater’s New Stagecraft. He had technical and artistic expertise in many disciplines, making it difficult to categorize his work into a specific stylistic trend. Bragdon’s work as an early modernist is important both in its own right and as a key to other 20th http://ritpress.rit.edu/publications/books/ undefined

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