Charles Follen McKim, FAIA

Year Awarded: 1909
Born: August 24, 1847; Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States
Died: 1909; St. James,New York


Projects
• 1907: College of the City of New York Campus
• 1906: Wisconsin State Capitol, Madison, Wisc.
• 1904: Montreal Stock Exchange, Montreal, Canada
• 1903: New York Stock Exchange, New York City
• 1899: St. Paul Building, New York City: once the tallest in New York at twenty-two stories
• 1890: World Building, New York City
• 1885: New York Produce Exchange, New York City
• 1882: Cornelius Vanderbilt Mansion, New York City
• 1880: Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, New York
• 1875: Western Union Telegraph Building, New York City
• 1875: Williamsburgh Savings Bank, Brooklyn, New York
• 1870: Equitable Life Assurance Society Building: the first building with lifts


Biography
A native Pennsylvanian, Charles McKim studied for a year at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School before going to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1867 to 1870. During that time, he also traveled through France and England.
McKim’s training indelibly ingrained in him the importance of comprehensive planning and integrated details.

On his return to the United States in 1870, McKim joined the office of Henry H. Richardson, where he remained for two years. He established his own practice, and in 1877 he began a partnership with William Rutherford Mead; the two were joined in 1879 by Stanford White, and their firm became McKim, Mead, and White, a leading American architectecture firm. McKim devoted himself to establishing the American Academy in Rome, of which he was the first president. McKim, Mead, & White designed the Academy building, the only one they designed outside North America.

McKim became an AIA Associate in 1875, and he was elected an AIA Fellow in 1877; he served as its president from 1902 to 1903. In addition, he was a member of the National Academy of Design, a member of the Architectural League of New York, a charter member of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a member of the Congressional Commission for the Improvement of the Park System of the City of Washington. He was also an honorary member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the National Sculpture Society.

Besides receiving the AIA Gold Medal, McKim also won a Gold Medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition and a Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1903. Also in 1903, King Edward of England presented him a gold medal for his services to architecture. He received a master’s degree from Harvard in 1893, Columbia gave him an honorary doctorate in 1904, and the University of Pennsylvania gave him one in 1909.