Background
Frank M. Howe was born in 1849 at Arlington, Massachusetts, United States.
Frank M. Howe was born in 1849 at Arlington, Massachusetts, United States.
He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as member of the first class in the newly formed Architectural Department.
After his graduation Mr. Howe entered the Boston office of Ware & Van Brunt for a period of practical training, then for a few years practiced in association with Arthur Ft. Dodd. On the termination of that partnership he joined Mr. Van Brunt and until 1885 the firm maintained an office in Boston, planning and executing a number of important commissions. Among the most notable of these were Harvard Medical School in Boston, Public Libraries at Cambridge and Dedham, and buildings on the campus of Wellesley College.
In 1885 Mr. Howe moved to Kansas City to open an office under the name of Van Brunt & Howe and continued active practice there the remainder of his life. He was identified with the plan and erection of several office buildings in the city, such as the Emery, Bird and Bryant Buildings, also churches and many residences, but the firm’s most important work was in designing several large Railroad Terminals on the Union Pacific Road, noted examples of which were built in Portland, Ore., Denver, Colo., Sioux City, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska. Van Brunt & Howe were also architects of the Electricity Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1894 in Chicago and planned a number of buildings at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904. Among later works executed under the firm name of Howe, Hoit & Cutler were the R. A. Long Building and the Christian Church on Independence Boulevard, Kansas City.