Background
Gustave W. Drach was born in 1861 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.
Gustave W. Drach was born in 1861 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.
At the age of twenty he graduated from the Ohio National Institute, afterward completed a two-year course in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Returning to Cincinnati the young man worked two years in the office of George R. Rapp, and after an adequate period of training, set up his own office in 1885. In the same year he became a member of the Western Association of Architects, and in 1889 following the merger of the Association with the American Institute of Architects, was made a Fellow of the Institute.
During a long and successful career Mr. Drach was identified with the planning of a number of important buildings in Cincinnati, among which were the City Water Works, 1903; Woodward High School, 1908; Good Samaritan Hospital, 1910, and the Hotel Gibson, built between 1913 and 1923. He was also architect of a number of works in Dayton, Ohio, and other cities.
He was an active member and president of the Cincinnati Chapter of the AIA (becoming an AIA Fellow when the national AIA merged with the Western Society of Architects) .