Background
Ernest Robert Graham was born in 1868 at Lowell, Massachusetts, United States.
Ernest Robert Graham was born in 1868 at Lowell, Massachusetts, United States.
He was educated in eastern schools, and later acquired a technical training at Coe College, Iowa, and at the University of Notre Dame.
Beginning his career at the age of twenty as draftsman in the Chicago office of Daniel Burnham, he was pro¬moted in rapid succession to more important positions, and in less than ten years became a virtual partner in the firm of D. H. Burnham & Co. Under his capable direction the various buildings being erected at the Worlds’ Columbian Exposition were completed in 1894, and through the ensuing years Mr. Graham was connected with the planning and supervision of many of the firm s outstanding works in Chicago and other cities. It is said that to him, more than any of his contemporaries in the profession, is due the perfected science of building, the combination of promotion, design and construction.
Following Mr. Burnham's death in 1912. work in the office continued under the name of Graham, Burham & Co. until 1917, subsequently Peirce Anderson, Edward Probst and Howard J. White were partners of the new firm of which Mr. Graham was the head. Among the many works executed during the period of his connection with the organization the following buildings in Chicago should be mentioned: Illinois Trust & Savings Bank Building; the twelve-story Merchants Loan & Trust Company Building at Clark and Adams Streets. 1900); the Railway Exchange (1900); Hayworth Office Building; Marshall Field & Company stores; Reid Murdock Building; Orchestra Hall Ineatre (1903); Insurance Exchange Office Building (1911); Wrigley Build- ijjfl ('921); State Bank of Chicago: Pittsfield Building, at Washington and Wabash; Office Building at 20 Wacker Street; Foreman Bank Building; Continental Bank Building, Adams and LaSale; Field Museum of Natural History, opened 192L Union Station (1924); Civic Opera House (1930); Merchandise Mart; Straus Building; Marshall Field’s main Store and Annex; Shedd Aquarium (1930); and the Field Office Building, Mr. Graham's last skyscraper, built in 1934 on site of the Home Insurance Building.
Outside of Chicago Mr. Graham and his partners are identified with the design of many outstanding works, such as the Continental Bank Building in Baltimore (1900); Flatiron Building in New York (1901): Hibernian Bank (1903) and the Terminal Railroad Station, New Orleans (1908); Frick Building in Pittsburgh, eighteen stories, (1904); First National Bank Building, Cincinnati (1903); Union Station at Washington, D. C. (1904-08); County Court House, Duluth, Minn. (1909); Mills Building Annex, at San Francisco (1905); Merchants Exchange in San Francisco (1905); Wana- makers’ Store in New York and Philadelphia (1909); First National Bank Building in Pittsburgh (1909); Post Office Building, Washington, D.C. (1912); William Filene's Department Store in Boston (1912); May Company Department Store in Cleveland (1912); Union Station (1902) and Terminal Tower Building (1930) at Cleveland; Equitable Life Assurance Company Building, 120 Broadway, New York (1914); Chase National Bank, New York, completed in 1929; Koppers Bank Building in Pittsburgh, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal at Philadelphia.
At the Field Museum of History in Chicago, Mr. Graham donated funds for the erection of the Hall of Historical Geology which bears his name. He also gave the Museum two of the largest collections in this country of Coptic , textiles from ancient Egypt, and at the time of his decease left an estate of over a million and a half, the largest part of which was donated to the American School of Fine Arts, organized in 1935, as an endowment fund.