Background
Thomas Nolan was born in 1857 at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States.
Thomas Nolan was born in 1857 at Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States.
He was graduated at the City University of N. Y. in 1879, studied architecture in New York at Columbia University. He also received supplementary training at the Atlier Daumet of the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts.
Upon his return to Rochester in 1884 Mr. Nolan opened an office for practice, and through the next decade carried on work in the successive firms of Walker &Nolan, Nolan & Nolan, and between 1891 and 1896 head of the firm of Nolan, Nolan & Stern. Among his important buildings planned and built under the latter firm name was the Rochester Chamber of Commerce, notable as the first structure of steel frame construction erected in the western New York area.
In Philadelphia after the turn of the century, he taught at the Architectural school of the University, also served as Chairman of a commission for the revision of City Building Laws and Basic Building Codes, and as a special representative of the A. I. A. to the American Society for Testing Materials. At one time he was Editor-in-chief of the Kidder-Nolan Architects and Builders Handbook.