Background
William H. McElfatrick was born in 1854 at Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States.
William H. McElfatrick was born in 1854 at Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States.
In 1886 they moved to New York to open an office under the name of J. B. McElfatrick & Son, and the younger man carried on work in that association for twenty years. Among the early works of the firm were the Empire and Abbey Theatres, and a re-modeling of the old Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway between 38th and 39th Streets.
Following his father's death in 1906, William McElfatrick established an office in Brooklyn where he became known as a specialist in theatre work. Noted examples of his buildings include the Manhattan and Lexington Opera Houses in New York, the Greenpoint Theatre and the Oxford Theatre in Brooklyn, and in Jersey City the Empress. McElfatrick also designed Oscar Hammerstein’s Opera House in Philadelphia, and various buildings of theatre type in other cities.