Alexander McMillan Welch

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Alexander McMillan Welch (1869–1943)[1] was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition, who led his New York City firm of Welch, Smith and Provot, in partnership with George Provot.

Welch, a descendant of Philip Welch, Ipswich, Massachusetts 1654,[2] graduated from Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Under the influence of his brother-in-law, Bashford Dean, Welch collected some antique swords

The firm's trademark style of discreet brick and limestone townhouses in neo-Georgian style is embodied in 1009 Fifth Avenue, one of a row of four houses built in 1899-1901 for the speculative builders William and Thomas Hall. Number 1009 was purchased by the tobacco magnate Benjamin Newton Duke who gave it to his daughter Mary Duke Biddle. Similar rowhouses by Welch, Smith and Provot are 28 through 38 West 86th Street (1906–1908).

Welch was the consulting architect in restorations made to a number of designated historical landmarks, including Alexander Hamilton's Hamilton Grange in Hamilton Heights, upper Manhattan and the Dutch Colonial Dyckman House,[3] as well as George Washington's Headquarters in White Plains, New York.

[edit] Selected commissions

  • The New French Hospital, 450-58 West 34th Street, New York (1905), for the French Benevolent Society,[4] as the result of a competition supervised by A.D.F. Hamlin, Columbia University. Isolated sunrooms at the rear south-facing facade were provided for each floor. The tuberculosis ward on the top floor was isolated from the others.

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ His portrait by Seymour Millais Stone is at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, of which Welch was a Trustee, 1920-1943, and Chairman of the Executive Committee, 1931-1938. The Society's webpage notes his obituary, The Record, 75:1 (January 1944).
  2. ^ Alexander McMillan Welch, Philip Welch of Ipswich, Massachusetts 1654 and His Descendents, (Richmond Virginia: Byrd Press) 1947:3-16.
  3. ^ Welch married Fannie Fredericka Dyckman in the house, 2 June 1896 (New York Times, 3 June 1896) Mrs Welch and her sister Mrs Bashford Dean, presented the house to New York City in 1916 (The New York Times) July 1916; the free restoration and furnishing of the house is described by Randall Mason, "Historic preservation, public memory and the making of modern New York City", in Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation Max Page, Randall Mason, eds. 2004:131ff.
  4. ^ Year Book of the Architectural League of New York, 1905.
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