Background
William Rutherford Mead was born in 1846 at Brattleboro, Vermont, United States.
(Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbus...)
Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, Flatbush, and Park Slope neighborhoods of Brooklyn and founded in 1895, the Beaux-Arts building, designed by McKim, Mead and White, was planned to be the largest art museum in the world. The museum initially struggled to maintain its building and collection, only to be revitalized in the late 20th century, thanks to major renovations.
William Rutherford Mead was born in 1846 at Brattleboro, Vermont, United States.
Mead attended Norwich University for two years and graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts in the class of 1867. He later learned architecture under George Fletcher Babb in Russell Sturgis's office in New York City.
Upon his return to New York, Mead met Charles McKim and the two young and ambitious architects established a joint office at 57 Broadway, joined a few years later by Standford White. In the partnership Mr. Mead’s share of work pertained mainly to office management.
The firm’s first important commission was the Boston Public Library, won in a competition in 1887, followed through the ensuing years by many outstanding buildings such as the Rhode Island State Capitol at Providence, 1892¬1903; the old Madison Square Garden, New York, 1891; Library and other buildings at Columbia University; Pennsylvania Railroad Terminal, New York, 1909; Borough Hall, Brooklyn, 1909; Bank of Montreal in Canada, and in New York City; Municipal Building, New York, 1911-14; Bellevue Hospital; New York Post Office on 8th Avenue, 1910-12: Museum of Fine Arts at Minneapolis, 1913-14; War Memorial, Nashville, Tenn., 1923-24. A detailed list of the firm’s work will be found in the biography of Charles McKim.
After the death of his two partners, Mr. Mead continued practice under the firm name during the remainder of his career, taking into the organization junior architects of long membership in the office. Among these were William Mitchell Kendall (who subsequently succeeded Mead as head of the firm), T. J.Van der Bent, Bert L. Fenner, William S. Richardson, and at a later time, Lawrence Grant White, who succeeded his father, the late Stanford White, as present head of the firm of McKim, Mead 6 White.
An early member and Fellow of the American Institute Institute of Architects, Mr. Mead was also active in the New York Chapter and served a term as president (1907-08).
In 1883, Mead married Olga Kilyeni (c.1850-1936) in Budapest, Hungary.