Alexander McMillan Welch explained

Alexander McMillan Welch
Birth Date:1869
Death Date:1943
Nationality:American

Alexander McMillan Welch (1869–1943)[1] was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition, who led the New York City firm of Welch, Smith & Provot, in partnership with Bowen B. Smith and George Provot.

Life and career

Welch, a descendant of Philip Welch, who emigrated to Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1654,[2] graduated from Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Under the influence of his brother-in-law, Bashford Dean, Welch collected some antique swords.

The firm's trademark style of discreet brick and limestone townhouses in neo-Georgian style is embodied in the Benjamin N. Duke House at 1009 Fifth Avenue, one of a row of four houses built in 1899-1901 for the speculative builders William and Thomas Hall. Number 1009 was purchased by the tobacco magnate Benjamin Newton Duke. Similar rowhouses by Welch, Smith & Provot are 28 through 38 West 86th Street (1906 - 1908) and 5 and 7 East 75th Street (1901).[3]

Welch was the consulting architect in restorations made to a number of designated historical landmarks, including Alexander Hamilton's Hamilton Grange in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, George Washington's Headquarters in White Plains, New York, and the Dutch Colonial Dyckman House in Inwood, Manhattan. Welch had married to Fannie Fredericka Dyckman on June 2, 1896.[4] She and her sister, Mrs Bashford Dean presented the Dyckman house to New York City in 1916.[5] [6]

Selected commissions

Notes and References

  1. His portrait by Seymour Millais Stone is at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, of which Welch was a Trustee, 1920-1943, and Chairman of the Executive Committee, 1931-1938. The Society's webpage notes his obituary, The Record, 75:1 (January 1944).
  2. Alexander McMillan Welch, Philip Welch of Ipswich, Massachusetts 1654 and His Descendents, (Richmond Virginia: Byrd Press) 1947:3-16.
  3. Web site: Manhattan NB Database . Office for Metropolitan History . 1 January 2021 . 15 February 2013 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130215041150/http://www.metrohistory.com/dbpages/NBresults.lasso . dead .
  4. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1896/06/03/503156742.pdf "Welch-Dyckman"
  5. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1915/09/30/104655168.pdf "Dutch Farmhouse a Gift to the City"
  6. The free restoration and furnishing of the Dyckman House is described in Mason, Randall "Historic preservation, public memory and the making of modern New York City", in Page, Max and Mason Randall (eds.) Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation 2004:131ff.
  7. Year Book of the Architectural League of New York, 1905.
  8. Web site: National Register of Historic Places Listings. 2012-02-17. Weekly List of Actions Taken on Properties: 5/26/14 through 5/30/14. National Park Service. 2015-12-22. 2014-10-10. https://web.archive.org/web/20141010230434/http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/listings/20120217.htm. dead.
  9. Web site: "Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS)" . https://archive.today/20150701003048/http://cris.parks.ny.gov/ . dead . July 1, 2015 . . Searchable database . 2015-12-01 . Note: This includes Web site: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: St. Stephen's Methodist Church . 2015-12-01 . Jacqueline Peu-Duvallon . PDF . August 2011 . and Accompanying photographs