Samuel Yellin

Career

Samuel Yellin was born to a Jewish family in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Ukraine in the Russian Empire in 1884. At the age of eleven, he was apprenticed to an master ironsmith. By the age of sixteen he had completed his apprenticeship. Shortly afterwards he left the Ukraine and traveled through Europe. In about 1905, he arrived in Philadelphia, where his mother and two sisters were already living; his brother arrived in Philadelphia at about the same time. Starting in early 1906, Samuel Yellin took classes at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art, and within several months he was teaching classes there, a position that he maintained until 1919.

In 1909, he opened his own metalsmith shop. In 1915, the firm of Mellor, Meigs & Howe, for whom he designed and created many commissions, designed a new studio for Samuel Yellin Metalworkers at 5520 Arch Street in Philadelphia. Samuel Yellin died in 1940, but the firm remained there for decades under direction of Samuel Yellin’s son, Harvey.

During the building boom of the 1920s, Samuel Yellin Metalworkers employed as many as 250 workers, many of them European artisans. Although Yellin was highly knowledgeable about traditional craftsmanship and design, he also championed creativity and the development of new designs. Samuel Yellin’s works can be found in some of the finest buildings in America.

Honors

Yellin received awards from the Art Institute of Chicago (1919), the American Institute of Architects (1920), the Architectural League of New York (1922), and the Bok Civic Award from the City of Philadelphia (1925). He was a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the T Square Club, the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and the Architectural League of New York.

Institutional and commercial

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Residential

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