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Building For Vistory
reprint
William Aiken Starrett, Thompson-Starrett Co
Thompson-Starrett Co., 1919
History; Military; World War I; Building; History / Military / World War I; World War, 1914-1918
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William Aiken Starrett, Jr. was an American famous architect, engineer, financier, builder of some of the most important American skyscrapers of his time.
Background
William was born on June 14, 1877 in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, one of seven children of William Aiken and Helen (Ekin) Starrett. His grandfather and great-grandfather (of Scotch origin) had been carpenters and stone masons in and near Pittsburgh and Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
His father, Presbyterian minister though he was, did not lose touch with the building tradition; he had, it is said, built his church, shared in the building of the first structure of the University of Kansas, and not only built but designed his own house. All five of his sons in their turn became builders of importance.
Education
He was educated in local schools, in Chicago, and at the University of Michigan (1893 - 95).
Career
During studies Starrett worked for a time in a wholesale grocery house, became a timekeeper for the George A. Fuller Company, general contractors, of which his brother Paul was a member, and by 1899 had risen to the position of a superintendent. From 1901 to 1913 he was vice-president of the famous Thompson-Starrett Company, New York, founded by his brothers Theodore and Ralph, for many years one of the two or three largest and most successful firms engaged in constructing skyscrapers, large commercial buildings, and factories.
For five years, 1913-18, he was a partner in the architectural firm of Starrett and Van Vleck, which designed numerous commercial buildings, among them the Kaufmann and Baer department store in Pittsburgh (1915), and the Lasalle and Koch store in Toledo (1916).
In 1917 he was appointed head of the emergency construction section of the War Industries Board, charged with the construction of camps, hospitals, army bases, flying fields. With the building industry in a chaotic state, to build $150, 000, 000 worth of cantonments in three months seemed almost impossible; yet under his direction the buildings began to rise all over the country with amazing rapidity.
Nominal profits of contractors were held within 32/3 percent, an extraordinary achievement. Construction under these conditions was of necessity extremely costly, however, and after the war was the subject of congressional investigation, in the course of which inexcusable and unwarranted accusations were made against Starrett, only to be proved groundless.
After his discharge from the army, a colonel in the quartermaster corps, he became vice-president of the George A. Fuller Company, and directed the construction of a number of large office buildings in Tokio, especially designed to resist earthquakes.
In 1922 with two of his brothers and Andrew J. Eken he founded the contracting firm of Starrett Brothers, Inc. (later Starrett Brothers and Eken, Inc. ), builders of some of the most important American skyscrapers of the time, among them the nineteen-story Starrett Lehigh Terminal Building in New York, the Carew Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio, the forty-story Ramsey Tower in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the seventy-story 40 Wall Street Building in New York, and the Empire State Building in New York.
He died in Madison, New Jersey, where he made his home.
Quotations:
He wrote in Skyscrapers and the Men Who Build Them, "There are opportunities in New York, Chicago, or any other large metropolis, for an enterprising operator to run a shoe-string into a fortune legitimately in one enterprise".
Membership
Starrett was a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Associated General Contractors of America, of the Society of Military Engineers.
Personality
His imagination in his own line was vivid, his judgment acute and sure. But in the wider implications of the job, he had, apparently, little interest. He was essentially an executive, not a designer; a man of action rather than a man of thought.
Quotes from others about the person
According to New York Times, Starrett was called "a great business executive with an engineering background".
Connections
He had a wife, Eloise Gedney of East Orange, New Jersey, whom he had married on June 14, 1900, and by a son and a daughter.