Background
Robert H. Robertson was born in 1849 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
Robert H. Robertson was born in 1849 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States.
He attended Rutgers College, and following graduation in 1867 began a period of architectural training.
After an apprenticeship in the Philadelphia office of Henry Sims, Mr. Robertson entered the ofiice of George B. Post in New York, and for a number of years continued as draftsman there.
In the period between 1875-78 Mr. Robertson was associated with William A. Potter in designing a number of college buildings and several churches in New York, including the Madison Avenue Presbyterian at 13th Street; Church of the Divine Paternity, Central Park West; Lutheran Church of the Advent, Broadway at 93rd Street; Holy Trinity on Lenox Avenue at 122nd Street, and the old Union Theological Seminary on Park Avenue, razed many years ago.
Independently Mr. Robertson continued through the 1880's to design eccles¬iastical buildings, noted examples of which were the Church of St. James, 71st Street and Madison Avenue; Rutgers Riverside Church, 73rd Street and Boulevard Yonkers, completed in 1899; St. Luke’s on Convent Avenue, and St. Paul’s Methodist, West End Avenue and 86th Street.
Later he turned his attention to preparing plans for public and commercial buildings in New York, and in that field of work acquired a large and successful practice. He designed a building for the New York Savings Bank, 8th Avenue and 14th Street; Lincoln Building on Broadway at 14th Street; Mendelssohn Glee Club, West 10th Street and Sixth Avenue; the Academy of Medicine on West 43rd Street, dating from 1890; Office of the American Tract Company, Nassau Street, 1894; Corn Exchange Building at William and Beaver Streets, eleven stories in height, completed in 1903. His last and largest commercial building, opened in 1909, was for the American Woolen Company erected at #221 Fourth Avenue from plans prepared under the firm name of R. H. Robertson & Son.