Delano_&_Aldrich

Delano & Aldrich

Delano & Aldrich

American architectural firm


Delano & Aldrich was an American Beaux-Arts architectural firm based in New York City. Many of its clients were among the wealthiest and most powerful families in the state. Founded in 1903, the firm operated as a partnership until 1935, when Aldrich left for an appointment in Rome. Delano continued in his practice nearly until his death in 1960.

History

The firm was founded in 1903 by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, who met when they worked together at the office of Carrère and Hastings in the years before the turn of the 20th century.

Almost immediately after the firm was formed, they won commissions from the Rockefeller family, among others. Delano & Aldrich tended to adapt conservative Georgian and Federal architectural styles for their townhouses, churches, schools, and a spate of social clubs for the Astors, Vanderbilts, and the Whitneys. Separately (Delano was the more prolific) and in tandem, they designed a number of buildings at Yale.[1]

Their work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1928 Summer Olympics.[2]

Aldrich left the partnership in 1935 to become the resident director of the American Academy at Rome, where he died in 1940.[3] Delano continued to practice almost until his death in 1960.[4]

Notable works

Willard D. Straight House.

Surviving buildings (all in New York City unless noted):

The Knickerbocker Club, New York
Willard Straight Hall (1925)

Archives

The Delano and Aldrich archive is held by the Drawings and Archives Department in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Some historical records of Delano & Aldrich's work on the Wall Street headquarters of Brown Brothers Harriman are included in the Brown Brothers Harriman Collection housed in the manuscript collections at New-York Historical Society.


References

  1. "Delano & Aldrich". Olympedia. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
  2. "Painters and Sculptors' Gallery Association to Begin Work," The New York Times, December 19, 1922
  3. Geng, Julie, "Straight Up: The Construction of Willard Straight Hall," Cornell Daily Sun Sept. 2, 2005 http://cornellsun.com/node/26950 Viewed July 27, 2009
  4. "American Art Show Opened at Venice," The New York Times, May 5, 1930
  5. "Frank P. Wood estate historic plaque". Archived from the original on 2018-09-11. Retrieved 2019-08-08.
  6. Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins, New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars (1987).

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