Marshall and Fox was an United States architectural firm based in Chicago from 1905 to 1926. The principals, Benjamin H. Marshall and Charles E. Fox, designed a number of significant buildings of many types, in Chicago and other cities, but they were best known for luxury hotels and apartment buildings.
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Benjamin Marshall (1874 – June 19, 1940) was a native of Chicago. His formal education did not extend beyond his years at a private preparatory academy, the Harvard School, in suburban Kenwood. Impressed by the buildings being erected for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 near his south side home, the young Marshall decided on a career in architecture. He became an apprentice of the firm of Marble and Wilson from 1893 to 1895. At Marble's death he became a partner in the firm, and then in 1902 established his own practice.[1] One of his earliest commissions was destroyed a month after its completion in an event remembered as one of Chicago's worst disasters, the Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903.[2]
Marshall's career was only temporarily affected by the disaster, and in 1905 he established the partnership with Fox which would continue until the latter's death in 1926. Marshall continued to operate the firm alone from 1926 until his retirement in the mid-1930s.
Charles Fox (July 1, 1870 – October 31, 1926) was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. After studying architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he moved to Chicago in 1891, where he was employed by the noted firm of Holabird & Roche, working primarily as a specialist in steel construction. The final 21 years of his career from 1905 to 1926 were spent in the partnership with Marshall, in which he acted as construction specialist and project manager.
Beginning in 1906, Marshall and Fox designed a series of buildings for the South Shore Country Club, the last of which was a large Mediterranean revival style clubhouse erected in 1916. This building still stands, and is being converted by the City of Chicago into the South Shore Cultural Center. The clubhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[3]
One of the firm's most noted works is the 1910 Blackstone Hotel, also on the National Register, along with the adjacent Blackstone Theater, now the Merle Reskin Theatre which was acquired by DePaul University in 1988 as part of their Loop Campus.
Other major buildings from the era include Stewart Apartments , the Drake Hotel, the Mayslake Peabody Estate (Oak Brook, Illinois), the Sheridan Trust and Savings Bank Building, and the Lake Shore Trust and Savings Bank Building, all in Chicago, plus the Schaff Building in Philadelphia, and the Edgewater Gulf Hotel and in Biloxi, Mississippi, a sister project to their Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago.
After Marshall's retirement, in 1935 the firm became Walton and Kegley, until 1950. From 1950 until 1969, the firm was known as Walton and Walton. The firm's papers are archived at the University of Texas.[1]