William Eugene Drummond
Encyclopedia
William Eugene Drummond was a Chicago Prairie School
architect.
, New Jersey
, the son of carpenter and cabinet maker Eugene Drummond and his wife Ida Marietta Lozier. The motto of the Drummond family was and is “Best ye can - aye - and be kind.” The family relocated from Newark to Chicago
in 1886; William was ten. The Drummonds settled on the west side of Chicago, in Austin, at 813 Central Avenue. William Drummond grew up in the village of Austin and attended the Austin public schools. The Drummond family house is standing as of 2008 and bears some resemblance to the Prairie style remolding it underwent at the hands of William and Eugene. William learned much in the remodeling of the family house. He and his father built the present house around and over the old house, with the family still living in it. The family owned the house until 1966. William was fifteen years older than his brother Frank; there were five girls between them. All seven Drummond children grew up in the village of Austin.
William Drummond was admitted to the University of Illinois School of Architecture in 1899, at the same time that fellow Prairie School architect Walter Burley Griffin
was attending there. However, financial difficulties forced Drummond leave after one year.
. Several months later, he went to work for Frank Lloyd Wright
. Drummond would serve as the chief draftsman for several well-known Wright’s commissions including the home of Edwin and Mamah Borthwick Cheney
in Oak Park
, the Frederick Robie House
in Chicago, the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, IL, and the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo
. Drummond obtained his architect’s license in 1901. In the years 1901-1905 he worked for Wright part-time while also working full-time for Richard E. Schmidt (1901-1902) and Daniel H. Burnham (1903-1905). Drummond returned to full-time employment with Wright from 1905 to 1909, when disagreement about pay caused him to leave Wright’s studio. But Drummond was a key figure in Wright’s studio during its most productive Prairie years. As Wright’s son, John, relates:
“William Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne
, Walter Burley Griffin
, Albert McArthur (Albert Chase McArthur
), Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts
and George Willis
were the draftsmen. Five men, two women. They wore flowing ties, and smocks suitable to the realm. The men wore their hair like Papa, all except Albert, he didn’t have enough hair. They worshiped Papa! Papa liked them! I know that each one of them was then making valuable contributions to the pioneering of the modern American architecture for which my father gets the full glory, headaches and recognition today! ”
In 1907 Drummond married Clara Alice McCulloch Christian (1874-1938), a woman several years his senior whose first husband died of tuberculosis. Their union produced three sons: Robert, William and Alan. In 1910, Mary Roberts, Isabel Roberts’ mother, sold the property next to their celebrated River Forest, IL, Isabel Roberts House
, to their friend and associate William Drummond, who built his own Prairie style home there.
and Louis Sullivan
. Isabel Roberts worked for Guenzel and Drummond for about a year. The partnership dissolved just after the start of World War I, in 1915.
Drummond continued his independent practice thereafter, designing churches, residences and small commercial buildings in the Prairie style, his work in the pure Prairie idiom culminating in the delightfully elegant Brookfield Kindergarten (also known as the Hilly House) of 1920 in Brookfield, Illinois.
Drummond was among those who submitted designs in the famous 1922 competition for the Chicago Tribune
Building. His entry is daringly original, with a huge tri-parti rectangular crown, perforated and carved in such a way that it defies conventional architectural descriptive terms. With oversize urn forms at the base of the crown, scooped recesses and geometric ornament at its summit, the building offered a dynamic melding of Prairie and Art Moderne that, had it been chosen, would have become an immediate and vibrant landmark on the Chicago skyline, without harking back to any historic style (as did the winning entry by architects John Mead Howells
and Raymond Hood
). Drummond's design still looks innovative ninety years later and compares favorably to early 21st century skyscraper design.
The prevailing view of his later career is that, as the public taste changed during the 1920s, Drummond’s work bore less of the hallmarks of the Prairie School. Instead, his work was sometimes characterized by English cottage and Tudor elements, many in River Forest, typified by the Edward W. Scott Residence (1928) with its massive chimney, steeply pitched gables and paired multi-story bay window towers, and by the River Forest Public Library (1928–1930).
William Drummond took part in the planning commission of River Forest throughout the 1920s and 1930s, while also remodeling several of Wright's designs. Shortly before his death on September 13, 1946, Drummond published a book detailing a plan to redesign the United States Capitol. Drummond's final resting place is Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Cook County, Illinois.
Prairie School
Prairie School was a late 19th and early 20th century architectural style, most common to the Midwestern United States.The works of the Prairie School architects are usually marked by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands,...
architect.
Early Years and Education
He was born in NewarkNewark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, the son of carpenter and cabinet maker Eugene Drummond and his wife Ida Marietta Lozier. The motto of the Drummond family was and is “Best ye can - aye - and be kind.” The family relocated from Newark to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1886; William was ten. The Drummonds settled on the west side of Chicago, in Austin, at 813 Central Avenue. William Drummond grew up in the village of Austin and attended the Austin public schools. The Drummond family house is standing as of 2008 and bears some resemblance to the Prairie style remolding it underwent at the hands of William and Eugene. William learned much in the remodeling of the family house. He and his father built the present house around and over the old house, with the family still living in it. The family owned the house until 1966. William was fifteen years older than his brother Frank; there were five girls between them. All seven Drummond children grew up in the village of Austin.
William Drummond was admitted to the University of Illinois School of Architecture in 1899, at the same time that fellow Prairie School architect Walter Burley Griffin
Walter Burley Griffin
Walter Burley Griffin was an American architect and landscape architect, who is best known for his role in designing Canberra, Australia's capital city...
was attending there. However, financial difficulties forced Drummond leave after one year.
The Prairie School Years
Thereafter, Drummond began working in Chicago in the firm of architect Louis SullivanLouis Sullivan
Louis Henri Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an...
. Several months later, he went to work for Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
. Drummond would serve as the chief draftsman for several well-known Wright’s commissions including the home of Edwin and Mamah Borthwick Cheney
Mamah Borthwick
Martha "Mamah" Borthwick is primarily noted for her relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright, which ended when she was murdered....
in Oak Park
Oak Park, Illinois
Oak Park, Illinois is a suburb bordering the west side of the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is the twenty-fifth largest municipality in Illinois. Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago due to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines,...
, the Frederick Robie House
Robie House
The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark in the Chicago, Illinois neighborhood of Hyde Park at 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue on the South Side. It was designed and built between 1908 and 1910 by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of his Prairie...
in Chicago, the Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, IL, and the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
. Drummond obtained his architect’s license in 1901. In the years 1901-1905 he worked for Wright part-time while also working full-time for Richard E. Schmidt (1901-1902) and Daniel H. Burnham (1903-1905). Drummond returned to full-time employment with Wright from 1905 to 1909, when disagreement about pay caused him to leave Wright’s studio. But Drummond was a key figure in Wright’s studio during its most productive Prairie years. As Wright’s son, John, relates:
“William Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne
Barry Byrne
Francis Barry Byrne was initially a member of the group of architects known as the Prairie School. After the demise of the Prairie School about 1914-16, Byrne continued as a successful architect by developing his own personal style.-Biography:Francis Barry Byrne was born and raised in Chicago...
, Walter Burley Griffin
Walter Burley Griffin
Walter Burley Griffin was an American architect and landscape architect, who is best known for his role in designing Canberra, Australia's capital city...
, Albert McArthur (Albert Chase McArthur
Albert Chase McArthur
Albert Chase McArthur was a Prairie School architect, and the designer of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.-Early years:...
), Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts
Isabel Roberts
Isabel Roberts was a Prairie School figure, member of the architectural design team in the Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright and partner with Ida Annah Ryan in the Orlando, Florida architecture firm, “Ryan and Roberts”. It is fair to say that Roberts is an under-appreciated member of Wright’s...
and George Willis
George Rodney Willis
George Rodney Willis, was an American architect associated with the Prairie School and the Oak Park, Illinois studio of Frank Lloyd Wright who thereafter had a successful career in California and in Texas....
were the draftsmen. Five men, two women. They wore flowing ties, and smocks suitable to the realm. The men wore their hair like Papa, all except Albert, he didn’t have enough hair. They worshiped Papa! Papa liked them! I know that each one of them was then making valuable contributions to the pioneering of the modern American architecture for which my father gets the full glory, headaches and recognition today! ”
In 1907 Drummond married Clara Alice McCulloch Christian (1874-1938), a woman several years his senior whose first husband died of tuberculosis. Their union produced three sons: Robert, William and Alan. In 1910, Mary Roberts, Isabel Roberts’ mother, sold the property next to their celebrated River Forest, IL, Isabel Roberts House
Isabel Roberts House
Isabel Roberts House is a classic 1908 Prairie House from the studio of Frank Lloyd Wright located at 603 Edgewood Place in River Forest, Illinois It was built for Isabel Roberts and her widowed mother, Mary Roberts....
, to their friend and associate William Drummond, who built his own Prairie style home there.
Private practice
Upon parting ways with Wright, Drummond went into private practice, even though he had already undertaken his first commission in 1908, the First Congregational Church of Austin. In 1912 he went into partnership with Louis Guenzel (1860–1956), who had been a draftsman for Dankmar AdlerDankmar Adler
Dankmar Adler was a celebrated German-born American architect.-Early years:...
and Louis Sullivan
Louis Sullivan
Louis Henri Sullivan was an American architect, and has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and "father of modernism" He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an...
. Isabel Roberts worked for Guenzel and Drummond for about a year. The partnership dissolved just after the start of World War I, in 1915.
Drummond continued his independent practice thereafter, designing churches, residences and small commercial buildings in the Prairie style, his work in the pure Prairie idiom culminating in the delightfully elegant Brookfield Kindergarten (also known as the Hilly House) of 1920 in Brookfield, Illinois.
Drummond was among those who submitted designs in the famous 1922 competition for the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
Building. His entry is daringly original, with a huge tri-parti rectangular crown, perforated and carved in such a way that it defies conventional architectural descriptive terms. With oversize urn forms at the base of the crown, scooped recesses and geometric ornament at its summit, the building offered a dynamic melding of Prairie and Art Moderne that, had it been chosen, would have become an immediate and vibrant landmark on the Chicago skyline, without harking back to any historic style (as did the winning entry by architects John Mead Howells
John Mead Howells
John Mead Howells was an American architect. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the son of author William Dean Howells, he studied architecture at Harvard and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met his future partners, I. N. Phelps Stokes and Raymond Hood...
and Raymond Hood
Raymond Hood
Raymond Mathewson Hood was an early-mid twentieth century architect who worked in the Art Deco style. He was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, educated at Brown University, MIT, and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the latter institution he met John Mead Howells, with whom Hood later partnered...
). Drummond's design still looks innovative ninety years later and compares favorably to early 21st century skyscraper design.
The prevailing view of his later career is that, as the public taste changed during the 1920s, Drummond’s work bore less of the hallmarks of the Prairie School. Instead, his work was sometimes characterized by English cottage and Tudor elements, many in River Forest, typified by the Edward W. Scott Residence (1928) with its massive chimney, steeply pitched gables and paired multi-story bay window towers, and by the River Forest Public Library (1928–1930).
William Drummond took part in the planning commission of River Forest throughout the 1920s and 1930s, while also remodeling several of Wright's designs. Shortly before his death on September 13, 1946, Drummond published a book detailing a plan to redesign the United States Capitol. Drummond's final resting place is Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Cook County, Illinois.
Partial Listing of Work by William Drummond
- Abajo Mountains (Utah) Resort (project)
- Residence (1901); 742 Franklin Street, River Forest IL
- L. Griffen house project (1902); Buena Park (Chicago) IL
- L. Wolff house (circa 1903); 4234 N Hazel, Chicago, IL
- Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. House project (1910); Grosse Pointe, MI
- John Broughton House (1908), 530 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, IL
- William E. Drummond Residence (1910); 559 Edgewood Place, River Forest, IL
- Albert W. Muther Residence (1910-1912); 560 (580) Edgewood Place, River Forest, IL>
- Charles Barr Residence (1910-1912); 7234 Quick Street, River Forest, IL
- Curtis Yelland House (1911); 37 River Heights Road, Mason City, IA
- River Forest Methodist Church (1912); 7070 Lake Street, River Forest, IL
- River Forest Bank Building (1912); River Forest, IL
- Gordon Abbott House (1912); 105 N. Grant, Hinsdale, IL
- George Stahmer House (1913); Fourth Street and Chicago Avenue, Maywood, IL
- River Forest Women’s Club (1913); 526 Ashland Avenue, River Forest, IL
- John B. Franke House, 2131 Forest Park Blvd, Ft Wayne, IN (1914) - with Barry Byrne
- Ralph S. Baker House (1914-1915); 1226 Ashland Avenue, Wilmette, IL
- John A. Klesert House (1915); Keystone Avenue, River Forest IL
- First Congregational Church (1915); 5701 West Midway Park, Chicago, IL 60644
- Coonley Estate “Thorncroft” (1919-1921); Riverside, IL
- Brookfield Kindergarten [aka Hilly House] (1920); 3601 Forest Avenue, Brookfield, IL
- Hollywood Community Hall (1921); Washington and Hollywood, Hollywood (Brookfield), IL
- Isabel Roberts House Remodeling (1922); Edgewood Place, River Forest IL
- Langhorne Residence Remodeling (1924-1940); Chicago, IL
- Badenoch House (1925); 555 Edgewood Place, River Forest IL
- O. B. Higgins Residence (1927); 535 Edgewood Place, River Forest IL
- Shedd Park Field House (1928); 3660 West 23rd Street, Chicago, IL
- Edward W. Scott Residence (1928); 619 Keystone, River Forest, IL
- River Forest Public LibraryRiver Forest Public LibraryThe River Forest Public Library is located at 735 Lathrop in River Forest, Illinois. The library serves the local community and is also part of the Metropolitan Library System, which connects libraries in the south and west suburbs of Chicago through a shared catalog and other services...
(1928-1930); River Forest, IL - Rookery Building Remodeling (1930); Chicago IL
- Washington Capital Redevelopment (1946-1947); Washington, DC