Background
paul Gmelin was born in 1859 in Ulm, Germany.
paul Gmelin was born in 1859 in Ulm, Germany.
A graduate of the University of Stuttgart.
He began his career in New York as draftsman with the Bridge Builders Magazine, and while with that periodical was asked by the late Charles McKim to make a perspective drawing of the Boston Public Library. Afterward known as a skilled designer he was employed in consecutive periods with several large architectural firms in New York, including Babb, Cook & Willard, Cyrus Eidlitz, and Eidlitz & MacKenzie. With the latter he worked on plans of the New York Times Building, and was credited with having much to do in preparing the original design.
Beginning professional practice in 1910, Mr. Gmelin joined Andrew MacKenzie and Stephen Voorhees in a partnership which was maintained for sixteen years. Following Mr. MacKenzie's death in 1926, Mr. Ralph Walker took his place in the firm with a subsequent change of name. In an early phase of his career Mr. Gmelin assisted in planning several of New York s first skyscrapers, and during the busy years of his later practice was identified with the design of the following structures: New York Telephone Building at Albany, 1913; Walter Lispenard Building, New York, 1914, and the Brooklyn Municipal Building, 1924. He died at his home at Cranford, N.J. at the age of seventy-eight, and the firm, reorganized under the name of Voorhees, Walker, Foley & Smith, continued to maintain the same offices at 101 Park Avenue.