Joseph Ladd Neal Explained

Joseph Ladd Neal (1867 - ?) was an American architect who designed Richardsonian Romanesque, Shingle Style and Colonial Revival buildings.

Born in Wiscasset, Maine, the son of a hardware merchant, he apprenticed under Boston, Massachusetts architect Charles Howard Walker. He worked for Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge in Boston and James Renwick Jr. in New York City, before settling in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania about 1892. In 1893 he established a partnership with S. Alfred Hopkins, that lasted a year. A partnership with George M. Rowland lasted from 1902 to 1906.^[1]

Four of his works  - Lithgow Public Library, Merrill Memorial Library, College Hill Station, Small Point Club  - are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Selected works

• Lithgow Library and Reading Room, Augusta, Maine, 1894–96, with S. Alfred Hopkins. Neal & Hopkins won the commission in a national design competition with 65 submissions.^[2]
• First Unitarian Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, c. 1895.
• Small Point Club, Small Point, Maine, 1895-97.^{[3] [4]}
• Morrill Memorial Library, Norwood, Massachusetts, 1897-98.^[5] A near-replica of Neal's Lithgow Library.
• Alterations to Beaver County Courthouse, Beaver, Pennsylvania, 1901.
• James Lyall Stuart house, Sewickley, Pennsylvania, c. 1905, with George M. Rowland.^[6]
• College Hill Station (Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad), Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, 1910, John Abiel Atwood, engineer.

Notes and References

1. http://www.smallpointclub.com/History.pdf Joseph Ladd Neal at Small Point
2. "Architects Neal & Hopkins," in The Lithgow Library and Reading Room (Augusta, ME: 1897), pp. 142-43.https://archive.org/stream/lithgowlibraryre00lithrich#page/n229/mode/2up
3. A Centennial History of the Small Point Club (Bath, ME: 1997).
4. http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natregsearchresult.do?fullresult=true&recordid=0 Small Point Club
5. http://mmlhistory.blogspot.com/p/morrill-memorial-library-finely.html 1897 description of Morrill Memorial Library
6. http://old.post-gazette.com/homes/20030426sewickley0426p3.asp "Homes with a History"