W. Wheeler Smith
| William Wheeler Smith | |
|---|---|
|
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| Born | c.1838 |
| Died | c.1908 New York City, New York |
| Nationality | USA |
| Other names | W. Wheeler Smith |
| Known for | Architect |
William Wheeler Smith, AIA, (c.1838-c.1908) professionally known as "W. Wheeler Smith," was an American architect and developer active in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century New York City. His home office (used at the end of his career) was located at 17 East 77th Street, New York City. He previously occupied 971 Madison Avenue.
Smith was a self-made millionaire and noted philanthropist. "He started as an apprentice in an architect's office and worked his way to the front rank of New York architects."
The most valuable properties he owned were 3, 5, and 7 Wall Street, 84 Broadway, "which were valued by Mr. Smith at $3,500,000 and on which is a mortgage of $1,400,000, and 71 Wall Street, valued at $550,000. A few years before Mr. Smith's death he decided to bequeath the revenue from the building at 71 Wall Street to the Association of the Relief of Respectable, Aged, and Indigent Females, at Amsterdam Avenue and 104th Street, and he made such a provision in his will, (which was revoked by a later codicil)."
His 1872 Gothic Revival design of St. Nicholas Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, a Reformed Protestant Dutch church in Midtown, Manhattan, located on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-eight Street, built in brownstone was “distinguished by an elegantly tapered spire that, according to John A. Bradley in the New York Times, ‘many declare…the most beautiful in this country.’” The congregation dated back to 1628. After “considerable public debate,” the church was demolished in 1949 for the Sinclair Oil Building.
Smith designed the "long-since demolished College of Physicians and Surgeons" of Roosevelt Hospital. He continued his work at the hospital and in 1892 designed the Syms Operating Theater in Roosevelt Hospital, now a teaching amphitheater and the oldest part of the evolving hospital. "'The finest structure in the world for surgical operations,' according to Harper's Weekly," Funding was donated by William J. Syms, a retired gun merchant. It prominently features an 1892 glass roof that lights the operating theater with 184 seats. "The mildly Romanesque building was one where 'beauty of exterior has been sacrificed to utility of interior,' according to Harper's Weekly." Constructed of deep red brick, with granite trim, the building has little decoration, but its unusual great, semiconical skylight on top of a small brick box is memorable. The last operation occurred in 1941. It is still freestanding, even as the tower surrounds it and is now a New York City Landmark.
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