From Church Building • a Study of the Principles of Architecture in their Relation to the Church, by Ralph Adams Cram, 1914:
“Some fifteen years ago, when Richardson's death removed the fictitious vitality of the alien style he had tried to make living, and it began to collapse into the follies of ‘school-house’ Romanesque, a few architects working quite independently began a kind of crusade against the chaos of styles that hitherto had inflicted architecture. They begin to study the motives and principles of medieval Christian architecture rather than the mouldings.”
There are two things I found interesting here. One of them is that, in this book by Cram, his approach to studying the motives behind forms is something that I agree with. The technical and associative reasons are important in design. Uninformed Eclecticism had created some pretty awful buildings. His solution was more rigor.
The second is his ability to make offhanded snide remarks. I would assume jealousy between architects has been going on for quite a while, but it's infrequent that you actually see it so clearly in print. It takes a certain amount of ‘confidence’ for Cram to say such a thing.
I guess the real point here, though, is that while it is true that Richardsonian Romanesque designs were weak after the death of H.H. Richardson, the problem is not with the style, but with the designer. There is no substitute for talent. To not give credit to Richardson for his inventiveness is to be rather blind to the force behind what it was that made Richardson - and Cram as well in many instances - great.