He was born on October 3, 1867 on a plantation near Frankfort, Kentucky, United States, the eldest of five children of Willis W. Polk and his second wife, Endemial Josephine (Drane) Burch. He was a descendant of Robert Bruce Polk who received a grant of land in Maryland in 1687.
When Willis was about six years old the family moved to St. Louis, where the mother managed a boarding-house and the father practised as an architect, served as president of the Mechanics' Exchange, and in 1882 ran unsuccessfully for Congress.
Education
He was tutored at home and in his fourteenth year became an apprentice to J. B. Legge, a local architect. He is said to have won, at the age of sixteen, a competition for a six-room school-house at Hope, near Hot Springs, to which place his family had moved.
Career
The younger Polk felt the lack of preparation for his profession, and obtained employment in various architectural offices in the East, at one time assisting Stanford White in New York City.
Upon his return from Europe he entered the Chicago office of Daniel H. Burnham, where he designed the First National Bank Building, Chicago, the Merchants Exchange, San Francisco, and the Indianapolis Terminal Building. When Burnham's firm undertook, in 1903, a plan for the adornment of San Francisco, Polk designed the bungalow on a spur of Twin Peaks whence Burnham could see the entire city spread out beneath him. He assisted in the preparation of the San Francisco Plan and for the rest of his life was an untiring enthusiast for the civic development thus initiated. Later, he visited St. Louis with Burnham to urge the value of a city plan.
After 1904 Polk practised independently in San Francisco. He was chairman of the architectural commission of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915) during the planning of that successful fair. In a preliminary article in Sunset (April 1912), he compared the site selected for the exposition to the orchestra of a Greek theatre, with the blue harbor forming the stage and the Marin hills the background.
Polk's buildings in the new San Francisco, erected after the earthquake and fire of 1906, were mainly of a monumental, conservative style. His careful restoration of the Mission Dolores is an example of his erudition. Other notable buildings in San Francisco include the First National Bank Building, the Pacific Union Club, the Mills Building and others.
He died at his country home, San Mateo.
Achievements
Personality
As a personality, Polk was always vivid. According to some, he was lovable, witty, and sarcastic, an indomitable champion of the beautiful as preferable to the utilitarian; according to others, he was egotistical, combative, a tactless self-advertiser. He was a man of magnetic presence and aristocratic appearance, generous, extravagant, a born "romancer" when autobiographical.
Connections
On April 24, 1900, in San Francisco, he married Christine (Barreda) Moore, a widow, of Spanish descent, and with her visited Europe. He had a stepson surviving him.