Background
Joseph M. Wilson was born in 1838 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, United States.
Joseph M. Wilson was born in 1838 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, United States.
After a public school education, he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N. Y., where he graduated in 1858.
The young man was first employed (1865-68) as architect and engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad, in charge of bridges and buildings on the main line. After giving up that work he joined his brothers (John A. and Henry), Civil Engineers, in forming a partnership with Henry Macomb, Architect, and in 1876 the firm of Wilson Brothers & Company established an office in Philadelphia.
Active in a practice mainly architectural, for twenty years, Joseph Wilson and his associates prepared plans for many important works in Philadelphia, among the better known, Machinery Hall and Exhibition Building at the Centennial Exposition; Susquehanna and Schuyler river bridges; Drexel Institute at 23rd Street (1891) and the Drexel Office Building, the city’s first "skyscraper," and the Terminal Station of the Reading, R.R. The firm also designed the Broad Street Station in Baltimore, Md., St. Mary's Church in Wayne, Pa., and a Catholic Protectory School for Boys in Fatlands, Pennsylvania.
An early member and later Fellow of the A. I. A. Mr. Wilson was also affiliated with the British and American Societies of Civil Engineers, and at one time served as Manager of Drexel Institute.