Howells, John Mead

Howells, John Mead (1868–1959). American architect. He worked with McKim, Mead, & White before establishing an office with Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867–1944) in New York (1897). The firm designed the Madison Square Church Mission House, NYC (1898), and Woodbridge Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT (1901), the latter resembling an C18 Parisian hôtel. Generally, their work was restrained, eclectic, and sensitive to context. The First Congregationalist Church, Danbury, CT (1909), reflected Howells's interest in American Colonial C18 architecture. Stokes developed interests in philanthropic work, notably the housing of the working classes, and published The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909 (1915–28). The partnership was dissolved in 1917, but Howells designed (with Raymond Hood and J. A. Fouilhoux) the Chicago Tribune Tower (1922–5), drawing on French Flamboyant Gothic precedents. Howells and Hood collaborated on the Daily News Building, NYC (1929–30), and Howells himself was responsible for the Panhellenic (later Beekman) Tower, NYC (1928), with Art Deco modelling. He was a sensitive restorer of early American architecture, and wrote much, including Lost Examples of Colonial Architecture (1931) and The Architectural Heritage of the Merrimack (1941).

Bibliography

Bunting & and Nylander (1973);
Goldstone & and Dalrymple (1974);
E. Kaufmann (ed.) (1970)