page_title: John Rochester Thomas
section_title: Innovations
hierarchical_section_title: John Rochester Thomas / Buildings / Innovations
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking north across 123d Street from Lenox Avenue on a sunny midday, at the former Second Reformed Church, built in 1887, designed by John Rochester Thomas, now belonging to Ephesus Seventh-Day Adventist Church. See nycago.org.
context_page_description: John Rochester Thomas was an American architect credited in his time with being the nation's most prolific designer of public and semi-public buildings.
  His work was characterized by originality, moderation and dignity, according to The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography of 1899: "Judged by the artistic quality of his work and by his achievements in accomplishing repeatedly what others have declared impossible, he well deserves the title of America's leading architect."
  Among his works are college buildings, prisons, armories, dozens of churches, and New York's Surrogate's Courthouse, his early 20th century Beaux Arts masterpiece based on his award-winning plan for a new City Hall which was never constructed.
context_section_description: In 1882 Thomas moved to New York city. In the combined armories of the 71st Regiment and 2d Battery (1893) he accomplished a feat never before attempted — the construction of two drill rooms, one above the other, free from all columns, 150 by 200 feet (46 by 61 metres) in area.
  In rebuilding the New York stock exchange in 1886, Thomas successfully used an iron plate girder 102 feet (31 m) long in order to dispense with columns in the large board room, against the judgment of other experts. It was in this stock exchange work that the first iron caisson construction work was used in connection with building foundations.
  In the Hays Building on Maiden Lane he first used the cantilever girder construction for distributing the load on the foundations, a system thereafter very much in vogue.
caption: Second Reformed Dutch Church, 123rd Street & Lenox Ave, Harlem
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