Background
Charles Follen Mckim was born in 1847 at Isabella Furnace, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States.
(It was founded to house the private library of J. P. Morg...)
It was founded to house the private library of J. P. Morgan in 1906, which included manuscripts and printed books, some of them in rare bindings, as well as his collection of prints and drawings. The library was designed by Charles McKim of the firm of McKim, Mead and White and cost $1.2 million.
Charles Follen Mckim was born in 1847 at Isabella Furnace, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States.
At the age of nineteen, he entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard with the intention of becoming a Mining Engineer. After graduating from Harvard, he studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
He was successful in securing a position as draftsman in the office of Gambrill & Richardson at a weekly salary of eight dollars, and during the year or more he remained with the firm assisted in designing the Brattle Square Church in Boston (Church of the Holy Angels) and worked on the preliminary plans for the proposed Trinity Church. Independently he designed homes for some of his friends, and encouraged by success in that initial step toward private practice, the young man rented a small office near the firm’s headquarters and printed his first business card, Charles McKim, Architect, with Gambrill & Richardson, 6 Hanover Street, New York.
In 1872 William R. Mead (see), who had just arrived in New York from Paris, was invited by McKim to collaborate with him on some of his commis¬sions, and as they became increasingly busy, in 1878 were joined by William Bigelow in organizing the firm of McKim, Mead & Bigelow, with an office at 57 Broadway. In the following year Mr. Bigelow withdrew to be succeeded by Stanford White who remained a partner and contributed much to the firm's success until his untimely death. One of the first of a long line of clients to engage the architectural services of McKim, Mead & White was the late James Gordon Bennett, a famous figure in the newspaper world. For him the partners designed the Newport (R.I.) Casino, built in 1881, and the Narra- gansett Pier group of buildings, some of which still stand, a center of spcial life in Newport during the eighties. The scope and importance of the firm s work increased with the passing years, awarded commissions to design such notable buildings as the Presbyterian Church at Montclair N. J., 1883; the Church of the Ascension in New York; the Boston Public Library (a major achievement), design approved 1887, building completed 1895; Methodist Episcopal Church at Baltimore, Md., 1887; the Washington Memorial Arch, New York, 1889; Freundschaft Society Building, Park Avenue at 72nd Street, 1890, the first of a number of well known Clubs; New York Insurance Buildings at Kansas City, and Omaha, Nebraska; Paulist Fathers’ Church on Columbus Avenue, New York 1890; St. Peter’s Church, Morristown, N. J., 1890-92; new building for "Judge" Magazine, 16th Street and Fifth Avenue, 1890; the old Madison Square Garden; Century Club, West 44th Street, New York and the Algonquin Club in Boston, 1890; Rhode Island State Capitol, commission awarded in 1892, work started in 1896 and completed 1903: Union Club, Fifth Avenue and 21st Street, New York and the Knickerbocker Club on 43rd Street, 1892; Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square, New York, and in Chicago the huge and elaborate Agriculture Building and the New York State Building (reminiscent of the Villa Medici in Italy), designed in 1892 for the World's Columbian Exposition.
In their early work McKim and his partners favored a style based on Classical precedents, nor were they influenced later by the popularity of the Richardsonian Romanesque. That they subsequently adapted the Italian Renaissance for both residential and public buildings was due largely to the enthusiasm of the late James M. Wells, member of the firm's designing staff for that style. In New York the Metropolitan Club, built in 1894 was one of their earliest and most successful buildings of Renaissance design, and in later years McKim, Mead 6 White became the leading exponents of that style in this country. A large number of the finest buildings in New York, public and private, erected in the late nineteenth and early part of the present century were the architectural achievements of the firm.
McKim was a member of the Congressional commission for the improvement of the Washington park system, the New York Art Commission, the Accademia di San Luca (Rome, 1899), the American Academy in Rome and the Architectural League. He was an honorary member and former president of the American Institute of Architects, and honorary member of the Society of Mural Painters. He became a National Academician in 1907. He belonged to the University, Lambs, Racquet and Tennis Clubs of New York, and to the St. Botolph and Somerset Clubs of Boston.