Hermann Valentin von Holst (1874–1955) was an American architect practicing in Chicago, Illinois, and Boca Raton, Florida, from the 1890s to the 1940s.
[9] In the period 1904–1906, von Holst created summer countryside estate architecture in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for socially prominent and wealthy clients, including Pittsburgh glassmaking millionaire George A. Macbeth and International Harvester partner John Glessner, whose Chicago Glessner House was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson.
The result of this collaboration is a collection of Prairie Style residences in a Griffin-planned landscape on Millikin Place in Decatur, Illinois[12] and a pair of homes, one by Wright and the other by von Holst and Mahony, on the same street in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The output of Wright's office in the years 1909–11 should be assessed on its own merit as work designed by the team headed by Marion Mahony under the auspices of von Holst.
[13] Modern architectural critics have wondered in print why Wright selected an architect not known for the Prairie Style to supervise his office.
He collaborated with George Grant Elmslie on a number of Prairie Style commercial and industrial structures, particularly a series of train stations and power company buildings.
In Boca Raton, von Holst headed a group that completed a subdivision of 29 Florida Spanish Revival homes named Floresta, which means a delightful rural place.
[17] [18] Modern real estate agents in Boca Raton tend to mistakenly describe von Holst's residential work there as by the colorful, quixotic Addison Mizner.
Lucy von Holst, along with the wives of their two remaining partners (John Verhoeven and Fred Aiken), prepared unsold homes for stylish winter rentals for snowbirds.