National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Analysis of Historical Significance and Integrity by Resource Type
a "lavish" expression in the Beaux-Arts idiom, as is his Woolworth Building (1910-13), designed
in the French Gothic style. 1359
One of Charles McKim's greatest disappointments was the loss of the competition for
the New York Public Library. However he "was glad to see the award go to young men who had
been in the office," that is John M. Carrère and Thomas Hastings. 1360 Both had attended the
Ecole and met as draftsmen in McKim, Mead & White's office. They formed their partnership
in 1885 while continuing to work for McKim, Mead & White. Their first commission came
months later, from Henry M. Flagler, a Standard Oil investor, for the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St.
Augustine, Florida. More Flagler commissions followed, which launched Carrère & Hastings'
career. 1361 The firm's rise never faltered, and it most closely paralleled McKim, Mead & White's
path in its large quantity of commissions, many of them high-profile, as well as in its
progressional use of styles: first in the use of the Shingle Style, then Georgian/Federal Revival,
Italian Renaissance, and Neoclassical. "The firm of Carrère & Hastings was one of the leading
proponents of Beaux-Arts architecture." 1362 This is evident in its many New York City
buildings. 1363
Other architects had worked for the Vanderbilt family, including John Snook, George B.
Post, Robert H. Robertson, and Warren & Wetmore. The firms of Babb, Cook & Willard and
Hoppin & Koen were successful in New York beginning in the 1890s. 1364 Slightly younger but
successful New York firms included Adams & Warren, Delano & Aldrich, and Hiss &
Weeks. 1365 Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan each had successful practices in Chicago. 1366
Longfellow, Alden & Harlow were practicing in Boston and Pittsburgh. 1367 Many other
architects and firms, too numerous to name individually, also practiced during McKim, Mead &
White's lifetimes. But McKim, Mead & White was a leader, not necessarily by conscious
decision, but by rarely opting to compromise its ideals. Its lead was reflected not only in the
number of its commissions, but also in its ability to devise the optimum scheme for the site at
hand. Others attempted to follow, but were most often less successful.
THE BEAUX-ARTS AND MCKIM, MEAD & WHITE
Throughout the McKim, Mead & White portfolio, classicism always played some part in
their designs, but nowhere was it expressed as purely as in their Beaux-Arts buildings. Beaux-
Arts, translated from French to "fine arts," is not a style but rather a theory of design as taught in
the Ecole des Beaux-Arts method, or "School of Fine Arts," in Paris. In France, architectural
study was included with the study of other fine arts, in the belief that painting and sculpture
were integral to architecture. Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to attend in the late
1840s, followed by H.H. Richardson, and then those of McKim's generation in the late 1860s,
1359
Gillon and Reed, 1, 7.
1360
Roth, 241.
1361
MacKay, 98.
1362
MacKay, 100-09.
1363
Gillon and Reed, 12-13, 30, 41, 62.
1364
MacKay, 58, 218-19.
1365
MacKay, 36-38, 127, 210.
1366
Gillon and Reed, 26, 20.
1367 Floyd.
241