Barry Byrne & Turners Cross, Ireland
You may recall that I wrote recently about our new photo album with photographs of St. Benedict's Abbey Church in Atchison, Kansas. It was a gorgeous building and fun to take pictures of, it was so photogenic.
You may recall further that when I tried to find more information about the building and its designer, very few webpages answered the call. The best was TurnersCross.com, whose main reason for being is to inform and delight with photographs and prose about the Church of Christ the King, the parish church for Turners Cross, Cork, Ireland. The architect of that building, as for St. Benedict's church, was Barry Byrne (1883-1967), who worked in Chicago. It is possible to find a bit more information about Mr. Byrne on the web, once you know that he was the architect of the abbey church at St. Benedict's.
Anyway, TurnersCross was my best source for satisfying my curiosity about Byrne and also provided a wonderful chance to see more of his work in a photo gallery called "Architecture of Barry Byrne", the best source you'll find of photographs documenting his work. His designs are inspiring. He gets classified by some as a "Prairie Architect", he studied once with Frank Lloyd Wright it seems. The Art Deco influences are clear and he developed those stylistic influences in ways that I find very handsome.
I was grateful to TurnersCross.com for the photographs and helpful information, and I was emboldened to write to the given contact address and offer my photographs of St. Benedict's Abbey Church to add to their gallery, since they had rather few pictures of that church.
I am pleased as punch to report that the webmaster of the site, who seems quite passionate about Byrne's work and was a very friendly correspondent, has added a number of my photographs to the gallery for "St. Benedicts Abbey, Atchison, Kansas (1951-1957)". They look quite splendid there.
In: All, Music & Art, Personal Notebook, The Art of Conversation