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Mellor, Meigs & Howe (1916–28) was a Philadelphia architectural firm best remembered for its Neo-Norman residential designs.
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Mellor & Meigs (1906–17 & 1928–40)
Mellor & Meigs, its predecessor and successor firm, was founded in 1906 by Walter Mellor and Arthur Ingersoll Meigs, who had worked together in the office of Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr. The young architects designed clubs and suburban residences in a variety of historicist styles.
The pair converted a former stable on Juniper Street into their architectural office, with drafting rooms on two floors and a high-ceilinged private office for entertaining clients. For the firm's early commissions they relied on family and personal connections. Meigs was a graduate of Princeton University, and designed the Colonial Revival Princeton Charter Club (1912–14), one of the university's eating clubs. Mellor had joined the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity ("Fiji") while attending the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture, and designed a Collegiate Gothic "Fiji" house at his alma mater (1913–14) and "Fiji" houses at Penn State University (1914–15) and the University of Washington (1929). Meigs designed an elaborate Tudor Revival fantasy for "Glen Brook" (1914–17), the Caspar W. Morris residence in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Mellor secured the commission for and designed the Renaissance Revival Bird House (1914–15) at the Philadelphia Zoo. Samuel Yellin fashioned custom metalwork for many of the firm's projects, and Mellor & Meigs designed him a Spanish Revival workshop (1915) in West Philadelphia.
Mellor, Meigs & Howe (1917–28)
George Howe, who had graduated from the Ecole de Beaux Arts and worked in the office of Furness, Evans & Company, joined Mellor & Meigs in February 1917. Meigs was more restrained in designing "Ropsley" (1916–18), the Francis I. McIlhenny residence in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, whose innovative plan is credited to Howe. "Ropsley" was more Norman than English, and made gardens an integral part of the whole.
Howe and Meigs both served in the Armed Forces during World War I, and were absent from the firm, 1917–19. Following their return, they developed an "American domestic architecture based on vernacular forms."
Their buildings were erected on an intelligent organic plan and executed in local materials with unusual structural honesty. The result was a kind of international provincial style, individual and consistent, which had a tiny influence on American domestic architecture.
The firm received awards and national attention—winning the 1922 Gold Medal from the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (for the Robert T. McCracken residence), and the 1925 Gold Medal for Excellence in Design from the Architectural League of New York (for Laverock Farm). Their mature Neo-Norman style, an "analgram of Howe's formalism and sensitivity to materials with some of the more theatrically picturesque elements of Arthur Meig's work," was repeated at Oxmoor (1926) and Pheasant Run Farm (1927–29).
Meigs is credited as the primary designer of Marjorie Walter Goodhart Hall (1926–28), the auditorium and concert hall of Bryn Mawr College. The $410,000 commission was the firm's largest, and the French Gothic building featured soaring arches and extensive ironwork by Yellin. Meigs was celebrated at its December 4, 1928 formal opening, a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Leopold Stokowski.
Various conflicts within the firm – including a dispute over design credit for Goodhart Hall – led to Howe's departure in 1928. He stated that he was leaving, “to become a priest of the Modern Faith.” Howe partnered with William Lescaze on the PSFS Building (1930–32), the first International Style skyscraper constructed in the United States, and continued his career as a Modernist architect. The firm's name reverted to Mellor & Meigs, and it continued with mostly residential work until Mellor's death in 1940. Meigs then associated with younger architects on projects, before going into semi-retirement.