John Mervin Carrère

Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère (November 9, 1858 – March 1, 1911) and Thomas Hastings (March 11, 1860 – October 22, 1929), was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architecture firms in the United States. It was located in New York City. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an automobile accident. Thomas Hastings continued on his own, using the same firm name, until his death in 1929.

Both men studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in France and worked at the firm of McKim, Mead, and White before they established their firm in the same building. The partnership's first success was the Ponce de León Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida, which they designed for Henry Flagler. They went on to establish a successful practice during the 1880s and early 1890s, and rose to national prominence by winning the competition for the New York Public Library in 1897. The firm designed commercial buildings, elaborate residences, and prominent public buildings in New York, Washington and as far afield as Toronto, London, Paris, Rome, and Havana.

John Merven Carrère was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the son of John Merven Carrère, a Baltimore native and Anna Louisa Maxwell, a Scots/Brazilian native of Rio who was the daughter of Joseph Maxwell, a prosperous coffee trader. The architect's father entered Maxwell's coffee business and later developed other business interests of his own in Brazil. As a boy Carrère was sent to Switzerland for his education until 1880, when he entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he was in the atelier of Leon Ginian until 1882. He returned to New York where his family had resettled after leaving Brazil and worked as draughtsmen for the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White. He and his Paris acquaintance, Thomas Hastings, worked there together before striking out on their own in 1885. During this period Carrère independently designed several circular panorama buildings in New York and Chicago. After he married Marion Dell in 1886 they lived in Staten Island and had three daughters, one of whom died as an infant. In 1901 they moved to East 65th Street in Manhattan, and built a country house in Harrison, New York.

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