Background
Silas R. Burns was born in 1855 in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States.
Silas R. Burns was born in 1855 in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States.
Silas received an architectural training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dayton worked as a draftsman with some of the leading firms in the city, and from 1881 to 1887 practiced jointly with Luther Peters. In that association, he was co-architect of the Dayton Public Library, and a number of other public and commercial buildings.
Shortly after the turn of the century, Mr. Burns moved to Los Angeles, United States and in 1907 entered into a partnership with Mr. Hunt and A. Wesley Eager which became Hunt & Burns after Mr. Eager withdrew in 1910. In the years that followed and until 1930 when Mr. Burns retired, the firm maintained one of the leading architectural offices in the city. Among their works of major importance were the Children's Hospital, 1910; the Southwest Museum (a distinguished building) 1914; the Los Angeles Country Club, 1922, later known as the Wilshire Country Club, and the Automobile Club of Southern California. The firm also designed a number of public schools both in the city and country, and Balch Hall at Scripps College, Claremont Independently Mr. Burns served as architect of the original buildings at the Soldiers' Home at Sawtelle (now West Los Angeles) and other Military Homes at Marion, Indiana, and Dayton, Ohio, United States.