McKim, Mead & White
McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm based in New York City. The firm came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York.
The firm's founding partners, Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928), and Stanford White (1853–1906), were giants in the architecture of their time, and remain important as innovators and leaders in the development of modern architecture worldwide. They formed a school of classically trained, technologically skilled designers who practiced well into the mid-20th century.[1] According to Robert A. M. Stern, only Frank Lloyd Wright was more important to the identity and character of modern American architecture.[2]
The firm's New York City buildings include Manhattan's former Pennsylvania Station, the Brooklyn Museum, and the main campus of Columbia University.
Elsewhere in New York state and New England, the firm designed college, library, school and other buildings such as the Boston Public Library, Walker Art Building at Bowdoin College, the Garden City campus of Adelphi University, and the Rhode Island State House. In Washington, D.C., the firm renovated the West and East Wings of the White House, and designed Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair and the National Museum of American History.
Across the United States, the firm designed buildings in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. Outside of the United States, the firm developed buildings in Canada, Cuba, and Italy. The scope and breadth of their achievement is notable, considering that many of the technologies and strategies they employed were nascent or non-existent when they began working in the 1880s.[3]