Andersen, Dennis Alan

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ANDERSEN, Dennis Alan

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: Attended the University of Washington (graduate studies in Germanic languages and literature).

ADDRESSES:

Home—410 W. Roy St., Seattle, WA 98119. Office—Bethany Lutheran Church, 7400 Woodlawn Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98115 Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of Washington Press, P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145.

CAREER:

Lutheran minister and author. Bethany Lutheran Church, Seattle, WA, pastor. Formerly curator at University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division. Also served on the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board, the Board of Governors of the Book Club of Washington, the Pacific Northwest Lutheran Historical Society, Board of Trustees of the Friends of the Seattle Public Library, and as president of the Lutheran Ecumenical Representatives Network, 2000—.

WRITINGS:

(With Jeffrey Karl Ochsner) Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H. H. Richardson, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA), 2003.

Also contributor to Shaping Seattle Architecture: A Historical Guide to the Architects, University of Washington Press (Seattle, WA) 1994.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dennis Alan Andersen parlayed his long interest in architecture and his experience in working with photographs and architectural drawings at the University of Washington libraries into his first book, Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H. H. Richardson, written with Jeffrey Ochsner, a professor of architecture at the University of Washington. The book chronicles the rebuilding of downtown Seattle after a fire in June, 1889, destroyed more than thirty blocks covering more than one hundred acres of the city. The massive rebuilding effort, most of which is today located in Seattle's Pioneer Square Historic District, began almost immediately after the fire. The designs of most of the new buildings bear the influence of architect H. H. Richardson, the originator of the Romanesque revival in the United States, who died three years prior to the fire. The book explores Richardson's far-reaching influence on the city's design. Containing over 200 black-and-white illustrations, Distant Corner begins with coverage of the city prior to the fire, includes details of the eighteen-month peak of the rebuilding effort, and ends with the financial panic of 1893, by which point rebuilding efforts had come to a halt. Peter S. Kaufman, writing in Library Journal, commented that Ochsner and Andersen "are perfectly qualified to write this historical scholarly study." In Choice, S. Schuyler found the book to be "a skillful examination of the diffusion of architectural taste" that "explains how the Romanesque Revival, so closely associated with Henry Hobson Richardson, became a national style in the aftermath of the architect's death." In addition to Richardson, the designs of Seattle architects William Boone, Elmer Fisher, John Parkinson, Charles Saunders, Edwin Houghton, Willis Ritchie, Emil DeNeuf, Warren Skillings, and Arthur Chamberlin are discussed.