1920 Bronze Medal Murtha-125 Welles Bosworth

Coin Details

Auction Record

$2,280 MS63 04-03-2024 Stack's Bowers

Description

The 1920 Murtha-125 bronze medal honors Welles Bosworth (1869-1966), the American architect whose works include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, the American Telephone & Telegraph Building at 195 Broadway in New York City, and the restoration of the Palace of Versailles and the Chateau de Fontainebleau in France, funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr. Bosworth's career bridged the Beaux-Arts tradition of the late nineteenth century and the modernist movements of the twentieth. Cataloged as Murtha-125, this medal is identified within a reference system for American architectural and professional medals. The bronze composition and the 1920 date suggest a mid-career honor or institutional recognition of Bosworth's achievements. His design for the MIT campus, completed between 1913 and 1916, established the Neoclassical architectural identity that the university maintains to this day, with its signature Great Dome and Ionic colonnade becoming among the most recognized academic buildings in America. Bosworth's later career focused increasingly on preservation work in France, where his restoration of Versailles earned him the Legion of Honor. His work represented the best of the American Beaux-Arts tradition — architects who had trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and who brought French classical design principles to American institutions. The medal preserves the recognition that Bosworth's contemporaries accorded him during a productive period of his long career.

Rarity Notes

Murtha-125 is a cataloged architectural award medal produced in limited quantities. Professional and institutional medals of this type typically survive in small numbers.

Cross References

PCGS #935294; Murtha-125; Welles Bosworth (1869-1966), architect