Willis G. Hale

Willis Gaylord Hale (January 1848, Seneca Falls, New York – August 29, 1907, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was a late-19th century architect who worked primarily in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His flamboyant, highly-ornate style was popular in the 1880s and 1890s, but quickly fell out of fashion in the 20th century.

According to the Biographical Album of Prominent Pennsylvanians (1890), Willis Hale became an architect through training in a series of offices: "His preliminary education was obtained at the academy at Seneca Falls, Cayuga Lake Academy at Aurora, and at the Auburn High School, where he finished his schooling. While still a pupil he ran away to join the army, but was too young to be enrolled, and was compelled to forgo his patriotic resolve. After quitting school he was given the choice of a three years' course at Ann Arbor University to study engineering, or an opportunity to study architecture. His tastes inclining more to the latter profession he decided to adopt it, and began study in Buffalo, going later to Rochester, and finally to Philadelphia, where he entered the office of Samuel Sloan, and later had Mr. John McArthur, Jr. as his preceptor. In 1873 he established himself in business at Wilkes Barre, Pa. ; but the troubles in the coal regions caused such a depression in all kinds of business that he returned, on November 2, 1876, to Philadelphia, where he opened an office and met with almost immediate success."

Hale married a niece of chemical manufacturer William Weightman, the largest landowner in the city. Hale designed dozens of blocks of middle-class housing for Weightman, especially in North and West Philadelphia. His lively facades often contrasted sculpture, tile, inventive brick- and stone-work, in an exuberant high-Victorian style: "Hale's genius was to take ... essentially identical rowhouses, with their mass-produced industrial parts and lathe-turned woodwork, and to make them distinctive." He designed a country house for Weightman in Germantown: "Ravenhill" (now part of Philadelphia University).

He also designed urban developments for street-car magnates Peter A. B. Widener and William L. Elkins, and a massive city house for Widener at the corner of Broad Street and Girard Avenue.

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