Background
Solon Spencer Beman was born in 1853 in Brooklyn, United States.
Solon Spencer Beman was born in 1853 in Brooklyn, United States.
Solon was educated in both public and private schools.
While still a youth he entered Richard Upjohn’s office in New York, and after a period of training under that noted master of church design, remained with him for a number of years as a draftsman. In 1979 he left for Chicago to execute a commission for his client, George Pullman. The project which cost, eventually, over one million dollars, included the erection of some eighteen hundred homes and public buildings on a fifty-two-acre site near Chicago for the new town of Pullman (later incorporated in the city). On the work, Mr. Beman was given a full charge in the preparation of plans and supervision of construction. He also served as architect on a similar project for the town of "Ivorydale”, though smaller in scale than Pullman, sponsored by the firm of Proctor 6 Gamble. During the last two decades of the 19th century, Mr. Beman established a reputation as the designer of varied types of commercial and business structures in Chicago and other cities. Among the most important of these were: The nine-story Pullman office building at the southwest corner of Adams and Michigan Ave., 1881; Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Building in Milwaukee, 1884; Two Studebaker Buildings in Chicago, 1885 and 1888; Administration Building at the Plant in South Bend, Ind.; Batavia Bank Building, LaCrosse, Wis., 1887; Grand Central Terminal of the Wisconsin Central R. R„ Chicago, 1888; Pioneer Press Building, St. Paul, Minn., 1888; Michigan Trust Building, Grand Rapids, 1891; and the Pabst Building, Milwaukee, 1891. Among his later works was the Berger Building at Pittsburgh (16 stories) in 1906, and the Hamilton Club in Chicago on Dearborn Street. At the World's Columbian Exposition in 1894, Mr. Beman was the architect of the Mines and Mining Building and the smaller Merchants' Tailors Building which stood on the edge of the Lagoon facing the Fine Arts Building. The latter structure was much admired and became the prototype of Christian Science churches which later were built in many different cities throughout the country, among which were six in Chicago designed by Mr. Beman. He also served as Architectural Consultant and Advisor on the planning and erection of the Mother Church in Boston built in 1906. As far as is known, however, he was an architect of only one of the other early churches in Chicago, that being St. Paul’s Episcopal. Drive, built for Robert Todd Lincoln (son of the former U. S. President) on his return to the city after serving four years as U. S. Minister to Great Britain; and the W. W. Kimball house, 1801 Prairie Avenue, designed in the style of a French chateau, built in 1887 and now the home of the Architects’ Club.
In residence design, Mr. Beman was prominently known. Among the number of luxurious homes built in Chicago during the late eighties those of his conception that deserve special mention were. The large stone house on Lake Shore Drive and Bellevue Place, known successively as the Jones, General Torrance, and the Rockefeller-McCormick residence, later, in 1946 occupied as a School for Juveniles, house at 1234 Lake Shore.