Walker & Gillette

Walker & Gillette was an architectural firm based in New York City, the partnership of A. Stewart Walker (1876–1952) and Leon N. Gillette (1878–1945), active from 1906 through 1945.

Walker was a native of Jersey City, New Jersey, and graduated from Harvard University in 1898. Leon Gillette, born in Malden, Massachusetts, had attended the University of Pennsylvania and worked in several New York firms, such as Howells & Stokes and Warren & Wetmore, and had also attended the École des Beaux-Arts from 1901 through 1903. The two joined forces in 1906.

Walker's wife, Sybil Kane Walker, was a decorator who worked with her husband on at least one commission. Her father was Grenville Kane, banker and longtime presence in the exclusive enclave of Tuxedo Park, New York, where Walker & Gillette received important early commissions.

On the death of Gillette in 1945, Walker continued in business as 'Walker & Poor' with Alfred Easton Poor (the son of one of their Long Island clients). Their notable commissions include the 1950 Parke-Bernet Galleries Building in New York City. After Walker's 1952 death, that firm would eventually become known as 'Swanke Hayden Connell'.

The firm was prolific and stylistically versatile. Their commissions are not clearly attributable to one partner or the other, apart from one source identifying Gillette as solely responsible for the Grasslands Hospital in East View (Valhalla), New York, several buildings in White Plains, New York, multiple buildings in the planned city of Venice, Florida, and a housing project in Lake Charles, Louisiana.