Graham was born on August 22, 1868, in Lowell, Michigan, the second son and second of three children of Robert and Emma (Post) Graham. His father, who had been a stonemason in the north of England, emigrated to Michigan shortly before his children were born.
Education
Young Graham received his only education in the public schools of Lowell. He was awarded honorary degrees of LL. D. by Coe College in 1927 and by the University of Notre Dame in 1929.
Career
Sometime in the early 1880's Graham moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he began his long career in the building arts as a bricklayer. In 1888 he went to Chicago and entered the architectural firm of Burnham and Root, working chiefly as inspector and supervisor of construction. On the death of John Wellborn Root in 1891, Graham became assistant to Daniel Burnham in the firm of D. H. Burnham and Company, and in 1893 he was appointed assistant director of construction and operation of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Burnham gave him a junior partnership in his firm in 1894 and made him a full partner in 1904, which position he held until 1912, the year of Burnham's death. Graham then established the firm of Graham, Burnham and Company in partnership with Burnham's sons, Hubert and Daniel, Jr. The Burnhams withdrew in 1917 to found their own business, and in that year Graham established, with three former Burnham associates the famous partnership of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. The three firms with which Graham was associated, particularly the last, enjoyed perhaps the greatest number of large and important commissions of any architects in the United States. Their work consisted almost entirely of commercial and civic buildings, many of them of international repute. The most important during Graham's full partnership in D. H. Burnham and Company (1904-1912) were the Marshall Field Store, Chicago (in two parts, completed in 1902 and 1914), Railway Exchange Building, Chicago (1904), Union Station, Washington, D. C. (1907), Wanamaker Store, Philadelphia (1909), Selfridge Store, London (1909), Gimbel Brothers Store, New York (1910), People's Gas Building, Chicago (1911), Washington (D. C. ) Post Office (1914), and the Field Museum, later renamed the Chicago Museum of Natural History (1919) - the last two both designed in 1911. Graham, Burnham and Company (1912-1917) designed or completed the design, among others, of the 208 South La Salle Street Building, Chicago (1912), the Filene Store, Boston (1912), Butler Brothers Store and Warehouses, Chicago (1913), Marshall Field Annex, Chicago (1914), Whitney Building, Detroit (1915), and the Hotel Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio (1917). The great building boom of the 1920's made Graham, Anderson, Probst and White the leading architects of commercial America. Up to Graham's death in 1936 the firm attracted international attention through such commissions as the Wrigley Building, Chicago (1921 and 1924), Continental Illinois Bank, Chicago (1923), Chicago Union Station (1924), Chase National Bank, New York (1928), the new Insurance Exchange, Chicago (1928), Civic Opera Building, Chicago (1929), Shedd Aquarium, Chicago (1929), Merchandise Mart, Chicago (1930, the largest commercial building in the world), Cleveland Union Terminal group (1931), Chicago Post Office (1932), Pennsylvania Station, Philadelphia (1932), and the Field Building, Chicago (1934). Between the Railway Exchange Building in 1904 and the Chase National Bank in 1928 all the work of Graham and his partners was classical or baroque in ornament and general treatment of main elevations, in great part the consequence of the long influence of the Chicago World's Fair and of D. H. Burnham's crusade for the national adoption of its classical character. For the Chase Bank, Graham, Anderson, Probst and White turned to the skyscraper verticalism so popular at the time and in the Field Building (1934) produced one of the finest representatives of this form. Graham died on November 22, 1936, of complications attendant upon hypertension and was buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. He had invested much of his income as an architect in various business enterprises, some of them buildings his firm had designed. He left a substantial fortune on his death, part of it to his wife and surviving relatives, the great bulk of it to establish in Chicago the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
Achievements
Connections
Graham married Carlotta V. Hull of Chicago on May 17, 1893. She died without issue on December 12, 1923. Two years later, on December 14, 1925, he married Ruby (Powell) Leffingwell, widow of William Leffingwell of Chicago, whose son, William, was adopted by Graham and changed his name to conform to that of his stepfather.