James Gibbs

James Gibbs (1682-1754), English architect, whose conservative eclectic style combined the restrained baroque tradition of Sir Christopher Wren with elements of exuberant Italian Mannerism. His best-known buildings are the Church of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields (1721-26, London), with its temple-front portico and high steeple rising from the roof line, and the Radcliffe Library (1739-49) at Oxford, with its imposing circular rotunda and high dome. His designs, extensively illustrated in his Book of Architecture (1728), were widely imitated in England and America, for instance, in New York City's Saint Paul's Chapel (1764-66).