William Rutherford Mead
| William Rutherford Mead | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
August 20, 1846 Brattleboro, Vermont, U.S. |
| Died | June 19, 1928 (aged 81) Paris, France |
| Nationality | American |
| Movement | Beaux-Arts, Architecture |
William Rutherford Mead (August 20, 1846 – June 19, 1928) was an American architect who was the "Center of the Office" of McKim, Mead, and White, a noted Gilded Age architectural firm. The firm's other two founding partners were Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), and Stanford White (1853–1906).
Mead was born in Brattleboro, Vermont. He was a cousin of President Rutherford B. Hayes, hence his middle name. His sister, Elinor, later married novelist William Dean Howells, and his younger brother Larkin Goldsmith Mead became a sculptor. William Mead was handsome, authoritative and quiet. His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother was the sister of John Humphrey Noyes, the Oneida Utopian. Mead attended Norwich University for two years and graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts in the class of 1867. He later learned architecture under George Fletcher Babb in Russell Sturgis's office in New York City.
In 1872, Mead partnered with Charles Follen McKim, a fellow New York architect, but Mead's talent was more for running an office rather than designing. This collaboration with McKim produced one of Mead's only known commissions, a house for an Amherst classmate, Dwight Herrick, from Mead's hometown of Chesterfield, New Hampshire.
Around December 1877, the firm took on William Bigelow, the elder brother of McKim's new wife, Annie Bigelow, as a partner, becoming McKim, Mead and Bigelow, with offices at 57 Broadway. In 1879, Bigelow withdrew from the firm, but they were joined by Stanford White to form McKim, Mead, and White. Mead was the partner who "hired and fired", "steered the ship", and spent his time "trying to keep the partners from making damn fools of themselves."
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