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A house in Elizabeth, New Jersey

Version 8.7 of the list (pdf) contains several changes:

  • The duplicate reference to the A.B. Ansbacher project has been removed.
  • The 534 Madison Avenue project has been confirmed: until now, only the coincidence of a reference to “534 Mad. Ave. Corp.” in firm records and the address of Mathesius’s uncle’s furniture showroom suggested a link.
  • The 1916 addition and alteration for Ray W. McMullen to a New Canaan house has been added.
  • J.B. Taylor had the firm design a house (another house) in Watertown in 1919.
  • The John C. Minor house in Elizabeth, N.J. of 1913 has been added. This is the third or fourth time the firm has worked for someone in the soda-water business. The house is no longer standing.
  • Lamb’s ca. 1873 designs for model farm cottages have been added.
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The Playhouse in the DuPont Building

Version 8.6 of the list (pdf) has new references to the tall office building in St. Louis designed but never built by Wheeler & McClure; a correction to the spelling of Selmar Hess; and a correction to the addresses of the project at 258 and 260 West 75th Street (there was no number 260, it was 316 West End Avenue).

A research trip to Wilmington, Delaware yielded a tour of the Playhouse Theatre in the DuPont Building (thanks, Michael). The interior is being renovated:

Playhouse interior

Interior of Playhouse showing rear of ground-level seating area.

The theater was added to the rear of an existing building and was not meant to have a public facade. This is the most interesting “exterior” wall:

Playhouse exterior

West facade of Playhouse.

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Lorenzo B. Wheeler designed the Hotel Tybee in Georgia

Version 8.5 of the list (pdf) is now set in Bell MT and includes these new items:

  • An attribution for an addition to Mr. Drysdale’s house.
  • A correction for the C.M. Pratt project incorrectly located in Riverhead.
  • A correction for the misattribution of the renovations of the Oriental Hotel: they were done by McKim, Mead & White.
  • A correction for the misnaming of Joseph D. Oliver in Indiana.
  • The inclusion of Massachusetts Hall at Dartmouth, which was left off the list somehow.
  • A correction for the location of the West project in Pittsfield, and an identification of the project as Court Hill (see images, an aerial).
  • An identification at long last of one David Foubister as the client for a 1922 project.
  • An identification but not a location for a house of Horatio M. Adams at Glen Cove of around 1903 (not his ca. 1895 house by Little & Browne).

There are several new projects or confirmations for L.B. Wheeler:

  • The Hotel Tybee in Georgia.
  • A house in Savannah.
  • Several Atlanta public school projects, including the rebuilding of the Crew Street School and the design of a new Mitchell Street School.
  • A failed competition entry for the Sumpter County Courthouse.
  • The Casa Grande hotel (unbuilt?) and a massive Casa Grande stable in Decatur, Alabama.

—–
[Update 05.12.2013: Broken link to Court Hill images repaired.]

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The Beeches, David S. Walton’s house in East Orange

Version 8.4 of the list (pdf) includes a few tidbits:

  • Now multiple alterations for the Munn house in Llewellyn Park.
  • Information on Clarence Whitman’s Staten Island house.
  • More detail on Underhill’s house or houses in Bellport.
  • Correction to the date for Christ Episcopal Church in Bellport: it was off by 10 years.
  • Correction to addresses for McKinlay and Gunn houses at 303 and 305 West 82nd.

This detail does not show up in the list: when D.S. Walton moved out of The Beeches in East Orange in 1920, he moved into Hollyoaks in West Orange, the Llewellyn Park house of the late Richard M. Colgate. Both houses had been altered by Lamb & Rich ten years or more before.

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What became of the Chappaqua Mountain Institute in Valhalla?

Back in business with the first update in seven months, version 8.3 of the list (pdf) includes these items:

  • The “Bettis Bungalow Hospital” in Chappaqua has been identified as a hospital or infirmary building at the Chappaqua Mountain Institute in Valhalla, N.Y., directed by Charles R. Blenis. Do you know what became of the Institute after World War I?
  • The modest two-level storefront addition at 55 West 28th (Street View) has been identified as a Hugh Lamb project of 1902.
  • Frederic A. Angell’s late-1880s house in Montclair, N.J. has been identified as a Lamb & Rich project.
  • The standing “Cliffside Chapel” or St. James’s Episcopal Church has been identified as a Lamb & Wheeler project (it is typically attributed to Lamb & Rich).
  • New information on the unbuilt L&W building at 37, 39 Greene Street has been included; it turns out that the client was Hugh Lamb’s neighbor and future father-in-law.
  • Corrections have been made to 825 Broadway, the project for Bernhard Cohen, George Lowther’s Riverside (Conn.) address, and the Colgate Delta Kappa Epsilon House (still standing at its prominent location: Street View).
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A book update

A new job with an emphasis on the November-April period will slow work on the book until the spring. New buildings keep appearing: the whole project is taking longer than expected. The estimated publication date has been pushed back to 2014.

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An addition to Richard Colgate’s house in Llewellyn Park

Version 8.2 of the list (pdf) includes new information about an interesting Decatur Car Works project by Lorenzo Wheeler, E.A. Shepard’s house in Montclair, and an addition to Richard Colgate’s house.

The second of two posts on pseudonyms in William I. Russell’s autobiography has been updated to reflect the identification of “Ned Banford” as Edward F. Sanford, thanks to a reader.

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Julian Mitchell’s house in Long Branch, N.J.

Version 8.1 of the list (pdf) includes minor corrections and goes out on a limb to attribute Julian Mitchell’s Long Branch, N.J. house to the firm:

Photo of Mitchell house in Helen-Chantal Pike, Images of America: West Long Branch Revisited (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Publishing, 2007), 54.

The house was the Monmouth County Junior League Designer Show House in 1997. Around that time, apparently, Stanford White began to be named as the architect. There are several reasons to believe that Charles A. Rich was the architect, including the appearance of the house.

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A Poughkeepsie project

For some time the list of buildings on this site erroneously attributed Christ Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie (1887, William A. Potter) to the firm. Version 7.7 of the list, posted 06.12.2011, reflected only the correction of this error.

What the firm did design for the church was its Albert Tower, Jr. Memorial Rectory (1903):

Tower Rectory, Poughkeepsie

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The Wheeler sisters in Sharon, Connecticut

Version 8.0 of the list (pdf) now credits the firm with:

  • A whole series of projects in Sharon, Connecticut for the Wheelers, McClurgs, and Tiffanys, including works at 32, 36, and 44 South Main Street.
  • The Old Guard Armory at 49th Street in Manhattan: Nathaniel Witherell was a co-owner of the commercial building.
  • Charles T. Root’s house in East Orange.
  • Judge Beattie’s house in Warwick, N.Y.
  • The Sparks house in Greenwich, which turns out to be well identified and well preserved.
  • Charles Greer’s four rental cottages on Evergreen Avenue in Rye, N.Y. Here is one of them:

A Greer cottage, Rye, N.Y.