Robert Mills (architect)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other persons of the same name please see Robert Mills (disambiguation).

Robert Mills (August 2nd 1781; Charleston, South Carolina - March 3rd 1855; Washington D.C.) is sometimes called the first native born American to become a professional architect; Charles Bulfinch perhaps has a clearer claim to this honor. In Charleston, South Carolina, he was student under Irish architect James Hoban, who later designed the White House, which became the official home of US presidents. He was also a member of the Freemasons.

He moved to Philadelphia in 1802, where he became an associate and student of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. He gradually became known in his own right. Philadelphia buildings that he designed are Washington Hall, Samson Street Baptist Church, and the Octagon Unitarian Church. He also designed the Upper Ferry Bridge covering.

In 1812, Mills designed the Monumental Church in Virginia, which was built to commemorate the death of several people in a nearby theater. This incidence sparked his later interest in fireproofing measures.

Moving to Baltimore, he designed St. John's Episcopal Church, the Maryland House of Industry, and the Maryland Club. He is noted for designing the nation's first Washington Monument, in Baltimore, which began construction in 1815. In the next few years he designed numerous buildings in South Carolina, Richmond, Virginia and Washington. In 1825 he published an atlas of South Carolina. In 1836 he won the competition for the design of the Washington Monument, his best known work.

Sketch of the Washington Monument in Baltimore by Robert Mills.

He also designed the Department of Treasury building and several other federal buildings in Washington, D. C., inmcluding the U.S. Patent Office Building. In South Carolina, he designed county courthouses in at least 18 counties, some of the public buildings in Columbia, and a few private homes. He also designed portions of the Landsford Canal, Chester County, on the Catabwa River in SC.

Mills was an early advocate of designing buildings so as to be fireproof. A fire in Kingstree, South Carolina destroyed much of the upper floor of a courthouse called the Fireproof Building that he designed, but the county records on the first floor were protected due to his fireproofing measures.

[edit] Context

The broadest context for Mills' architecture was neoclassical architecture. This was the dominant style of building that was winning architectural design competitions and major projects of the time, both in Europe and in America. Under the umbrella of neoclassicism, his designs were partly Palladian, Georgian and often Greek Revival.

Apart from stylistic movements in architecture going on in the world at his time, Robert Mills was involved in the more local context of building in the Mid-Atlantic States. There, and especially in Washington D.C., were many figures contributing architecture of high quality. To build, as Mills did, on what is now the National Mall he had to contend with the planning strictures of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, as well as Andrew and Joseph Ellicott and planning movements such as the City Beautiful Movement. Being an architect of the now Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area he was also not to miss the influence of Thomas Jefferson and Jeffersonian architecture. Mills, with Jefferson and others, was able to create a distinctive federal style of architecture.