Samuel Sloan (architect)

Samuel Sloan
"Longwood" (Haller Nutt mansion), Natchez, Mississippi (1859-62, unfinished).
Born	March 7, 1815 Chester County, Pennsylvania
Died	July 19, 1884 (1884-07-20) (aged 69) Raleigh, North Carolina
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	-Kirkbride's Insane Asylum, Philadelphia -Longwood, Natchez -Bartram Hall, Philadelphia (demolished)

Samuel Sloan (March 7, 1815 – July 19, 1884) was a Philadelphia-based architect and best-selling author of architecture books in the mid-19th century. He specialized in Italianate villas and country houses, churches, and institutional buildings. His most famous building—the octagonal mansion "Longwood" in Natchez, Mississippi—is unfinished; construction was abandoned during the American Civil War.

Born on March 7, 1815, in Honeybrook Township,Chester County, Pennsylvania, the son of William Sloan and Mary Kirkwood, Sloan trained as a carpenter and came to Philadelphia in the mid-1830s. He is said to have worked with John Haviland on Eastern State Penitentiary and with Isaac Holden on the former Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.

Samuel Sloan married Mary Pennell in 1843. Their children were Ellwood Pennell, Howard L., Laura W., and Ada. He had three grandchildren by his eldest son, Ellwood. They were Maurice, Helen and Samuel A. Sloan.

By 1851, Sloan had won a commission for the Delaware County, Pennsylvania, courthouse and jail, and designed Andrew Eastwick's villa "Bartram Hall" near the site of Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia. These successes prompted him to begin to list his vocation as "architect".

Sloan became a prolific author on architecture most notably for The Model Architect as well as City and Suburban Architecture and Sloan's Constructive Architecture (1859). In 1861, he wrote Sloan's Homestead Architecture and American Houses, and A Variety of Designs for Rural Buildings. Sloan also reached thousands of potential customers through the pages of Godey's Lady's Book, which began publishing his designs in 1852.