Background
Chrles Amos Cummings was born in 1833 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Chrles Amos Cummings was born in 1833 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
He was educated in the city schools, Mr. Cummings entered Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N. Y., for a course of technical study.
After returning to Boston acquired architectural training in the office of the late Gridley Bryant. Later he broadened the scope of his studies during extensive travels in Europe and Asia.
Prior to the Civil War Mr. Cummings joined Mr. Sears in establishing the firm with which he was connected for many years, and during his practice planned both public and commercial buildings in Boston and elsewhere, also numerous city residences. After the great fire of 1872 which devastated a large part of Boston’s business section, the firm was active in reconstruction work. Independently he designed a number of churches, a noted example of which was the New Old South on Boylston Street built in 1876. Among other important buildings with which he was identified were the First Universallst Church in Lynn; Library and Chapel at Phillips Exeter Academy, Andover; Hotel Kempton on Berkeley Street, c. 1877, one of the oldest apartment-hotels in Boston; New England Hospital for Women and Children in Roxbury, c. 1876; Mason & Hamlin Building on Tremont Street, Boston, and the Hotel Boylston. He was also the architect of many commercial buildings, but during the last twenty years of his life saw many of them "the pride of his professional accomplishments," replaced by more modern structures. In addition he designed several distinguished private homes in Boston (including his own), a number of houses on Devonshire Street (long since razed to make that street a business thoroughfare), and at Cambridge the home of Professor B. L. Robinson.
A charter member of the Boston Society of Architects, A.I.A., in 1867, Mr. Cummings participated actively in its affairs during his career. After serving as Secretary, then Vice-President, he was elected President in 1896, and served in that office for five consecutive years.