John Joseph Earley

At age seventeen, he began work as an apprentice at his father’s studio in Rosslyn, Virginia to learn sculpture, modelmaking, and stonecarving.

James Earley moved his family to Washington, DC in 1900 and leased property on G Street to build a new home for his business.

The Earley Studio received contracts for both government and private work, including the remodeling of the interior of the White House during President Roosevelt’s first term, and the elaborate main lobby of the new building for the Willard Hotel, constructed in 1902 at Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street NW in Washington, DC.

In 1915, John Earley worked closely with the Commission of Fine Arts and produced a full-size mock up of a wall section for Meridian Hill Park.

Earley called the result “architectural concrete”, and it was used with great success for the walls, balustrades, benches, urns, and obelisks of Meridian Hill Park.