Isaiah Rogers

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Isaiah Rogers (August 17, 1800—April 13, 1869), born in Marshfield, Massachusetts to Isaac Rogers, a farmer and shipwright, and Hannah Ford, was a prominent American architect of national reputation who practiced in Mobile, Alabama, Boston, Massachusetts, New York City, and Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1823 he married Emily Wesley Tobey of Portland, Maine. The couple had eight children, four of whom survived infancy. Two of his sons followed him into the profession.

Rogers was a student of Solomon Willard, and perhaps the country's foremost hotel architect. He was renowned for Boston's Tremont House (the first hotel with indoor plumbing), the Astor House in New York City and the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, Virginia. He designed the Burnett House in Cincinnati, then the largest and most elegant hotel in the Midwest. He also designed New York's Astor Place Opera House.

The Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, Kentucky was designed in the Neo-Gothic style by William Keeley and Isaiah Rogers. Upon its completion in 1852, the 287-foot spire was North America’s tallest.

His design for the fourth Hamilton County Courthouse was for a massive three-story building, measuring 190 feet square. The building bore a close resemblance to Rogers' Merchants Exchange building in New York City, located on Wall Street. He also designed the Boston Merchants Exchange.

Rogers was the supervising architect, the last of five, who worked upon the Ohio Statehouse. He completed the building in 1861.

From 1863 to 1865, due to his friendship with fellow Cincinnatian Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, he was Supervising Architect of the United States. In this role he designed and patented four burglar-proof vaults built in the northwest corner of the Treasury Building in 1864. Their lining consisted of two layers of cast iron balls interposed between the traditional alternating plates of wrought iron and hardened steel. The balls, held loosely in specially formed cavities, were designed to rotate freely upon contact with a drill, or any other tool, thereby preventing a burglar from penetrating. The design was first used for two vaults built in the New York Sub-Treasury, now Federal Hall, in 1862. Similar vaults were built in custom houses in Detroit, Cincinnati, and Chicago.