William Henry Goodyear

William Henry Goodyear (1846–1923) was a noted architectural historian, art historian, and museum curator. He was the son of Charles Goodyear (1800–1860), inventor of rubber vulcanization, and Clarissa Beecher Goodyear.

Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, spent much of his childhood in England and France, and graduated from Yale University in 1867 with a degree in history. He then relocated to Italy, then Berlin (where he studied Roman law and history), and subsequently Heidelberg where he studied art history under archaeologist Karl Friedrichs (1831-1871). In 1869 Goodyear traveled with Friedrichs to Syria and Cyprus, then spent 1870 in Venice and Pisa where he studied the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

In 1871 he married Sarah Sanford, his first of three wives, and taught at Cooper Union until 1882, when he was hired as first curator of the new Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1888 Goodyear published a popular survey of art history, and in 1899 was appointed curator of art at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (today the Brooklyn Museum of Art). From 1895-1914 he conducted a series of studies in which he photographed and measured European buildings.

William H. Goodyear died in 1923 of pneumonia and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Wilford S. Conrow, who had painted his portrait in 1916 [BMA, Department of Painting and Sculpture, 25.182], wrote a memorial to his life and work for the Brooklyn Museum Quarterly of July 1923. In this piece Conrow further emphasizes and praises the importance of the discovery of architectural refinements in Goodyear's life and the value of his work to the fields of architecture and art. He concludes by stating that “our present duty, the responsibility that we must accept, is to preserve and spread this precious, long-lost knowledge in order that it may play its full, qualifying role in the creative arts of the future.” ^[1]