Sumner Hunt
| Sumner P. Hunt | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | May 8, 1865 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | November 19, 1938 Los Angeles, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Practice | Sole practitioner, and in partnerships of: Eisen and Hunt (1895–1899), Hunt and Eager (1899–1908), Hunt, Eager & Burns (1908–1910), Hunt and Burns (1910–1930) |
| Buildings | Bradbury Building, Southwest Museum, Vermont Square Branch |
| Projects | Los Angeles region, California |
| Design | Historicist−Revival architecture styles |
Sumner P. Hunt (Brooklyn, NY, May 8, 1865 – Los Angeles, CA, November 19, 1938) was an architect in Los Angeles from 1889 to the 1930s. On January 21, 1892, he married Mary Hancock Chapman, January 21, 1892. They had a daughter Louise Hunt.
Hunt initially apprenticed with and worked for Clarence B. Cutler in Troy, NY from 1879–1887, and in Cutler’s office in New York, NY until 1889.
In Los Angeles, where he moved in 1889, he worked for Eugene Caulkin and Sidney I. Haas (designers of the 1888 Los Angeles City Hall) from 1889–1892. Hunt moved to his own practice in 1893, the year he was hired by Louis Bradbury to design the Bradbury Building. In 1895 Hunt formed a partnership with Theodore A. Eisen. Eisen & Hunt continued until 1899.
In 1899 Hunt went into partnership with A. Wesley Eager. Hunt & Eager lasted until 1908, at which point Silas Reese Burns joined the firm, which became Hunt, Eager & Burns. In 1910 Eager retired, and the firm became known as Hunt & Burns, a partnership that lasted until 1930.
In her essay on Hunt's early work, Karen J. Weitze notes that he may have been involved in the design of Sidney Haas’s Moorish- and Mission-revival designs for the California Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Hunt adopted the Mission Revival style for the Froebel Institute, also known as Casa de Rosas (1893), and “became a leading proponent of Hispanicism, a fact that was clearly reflected in his Southern California Building at the California Midwinter Exhibition” in 1894.
Hunt joined Charles Lummis and the architect Arthur B. Benton in 1894 to found the California Landmarks Club, with the purpose of saving Southern California’s mission buildings. The following year Lummis mentioned some of Hunt’s architecture in an article in Land of Sunshine, in which he advocated for turning Los Angeles from a beautiful city into a picturesque one. In the same article Lummis attributed the plan of the Bradbury building to Hunt.
Projects designed by Hunt, and by his architectural partnerships, include:
The Press Reference Library (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Examiner, 1912), p,. 82, lists the following buildings for Hunt, although he very likely designed them in partnership:
According to Our Architecture: Morgan & Walls, John Parkinson, Hunt & Eager, compiled by J. L. Le Berthon (Los Angeles, CA: J. L. Le Berthon, 1904), Hunt & Eager were responsible for the following structures:
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