Background
Harry Bergen Wheelock was born in 1861 in Illinois, United States.
Harry Bergen Wheelock was born in 1861 in Illinois, United States.
The boy attended the city schools of Chicago, and when he was twenty entered the University to study Civil Engineering.
Before receiving his degree, however, he left college to assist his foster father, then elderly, in his architectural office, and following the latter's death, took over his practice.
Through the eighties and nineties Harry Bergen Wheelock acquired a large and successful practice in Chicago. He was architect of the Methodist Book Building, Presbyterian Home for the Aged, the Patten Printing Company Building, and the Moody Bible Institute, the latter his most important building, on which he remained in charge for many years after the turn of the century. In addition to work in Chicago, he designed the James Patton Memorial and the adjoining Nurses’ Home in Evanston.
Mr. Wheelock was also largely responsible for the bill Licensing Architects and the Registration Act by the State Legislature, serving for many years on the First Board of Architectural Examiners.
In 1885 Mr. Wheelock was one of the founders of the Chicago Architectural Club, also prominently identified with the organization of the Illinois Society of Architects, originally established as the Chicago Architects’ Business Association.