Architect, United States Ralph Adams Cram was without question the foremost practitioner of the Gothic style of architecture of his day in the United States, but he was a writer and advocate of no less energy and stature. The author of 24 books and scores of magazine and journal articles, Cram was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 614 1914 to 1922, and he toiled ceaselessly to advance his reasons for the continuation of an architectural tradition stretching back to medieval times. Born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, Cram lacked the money to attend college and instead became an apprentice in the Boston architectural firm of Rotch and Tilden. Through his expanding circle of acquaintances in the Boston artistic world, Cram fell under the influence of the work of the English designer-writers John Ruskin and William Morris and came to admire the work of Henry Vaughan, an English Gothicist (and follower of Ge...