Nathan C. Wyeth
He designed a large number of structures in Washington, D.C., including the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Potomac River, the USS Maine Mast Memorial, the D.C. Armory, the Tidal Basin Inlet Bridge, many structures that comprise Judiciary Square, and numerous private homes—many of which now serve as embassies.
[8] Nathan's father, Charles, was the wealthy co-owner of Wyeth and Vandervoort, a company that sold malt for use by brewers of alcoholic beverages.
[9] Nathan was just a year old when his parents carried him to safety out of the city when the Great Chicago Fire struck in October 1871.
[14] He retired on April 16, 1887, at the rank of brigadier general in the regular army, after which he became governor of the Soldiers' Home in Washington, D.C., on February 27, 1889.
[9][11] Although it is unclear if the Wyeths recovered much money, enough was received to pay for Nathan and Leonard's secondary and higher education.
Despite the financial setbacks of his trust fund, he began his post-secondary education by studying watercolor painting in Belgium and Switzerland.
[15] Wyeth returned to the United States in the summer of 1889 and studied at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
[19][b] In summer 1890, he enrolled as an art student at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France.
He studied under Duray Pascal, switched his major to architecture, and received his Architect Diplômé par le Gouvernement from the school in 1899.
)[20] After graduating from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Wyeth took a job with Carrère and Hastings, a New York City-based company that was one of the most prominent architectural firms in the United States.
The Tidal Basin was designed so that fresh water would flow in via its southern strait, and then flush outward into the Washington Channel.
In 1907, the United States Army Corps of Engineers decided that gates were needed at the southern inlet to prevent the basin's water from backflowing into the Potomac (thus ensuring a flush into the channel).
[23] The Corps decided that a bridge should be built along with the gates, so that the roadway around the Tidal Basin would make a complete circuit.
[29][40] One of Wyeth's largest commissions in this period came in 1913, when he designed a new building for the Columbia Hospital for Women at 2425 L Street NW.
[41][42][43] An avid socialite,[17] Wyeth's short time working for the federal government had won him a wide range of important friends.
In 1909, he entered and won a competition to redesign the West Wing of the White House, turning a temporary structure into a permanent office complex.
[44] The Lemon Building addition had helped him win the commission,[45] Wyeth's design for the West Wing, construction on which ended in October 1909, was a one-story structure which included the first and original Oval Office—which mimicked the Blue Room and Yellow Oval Room in the Executive Residence.
[46] (The Oval Office was moved in 1934 from the center of the south wall of the West Wing to the southeast corner of the building.
[50] On October 17, 1917,[51] Wyeth was hired by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to co-design the newly approved Francis Scott Key Bridge.
In 1925, Wyeth joined many of the city's top architects in forming Allied Architects of Washington, D.C., Inc.[61] Teams within this federation of architectural firms worked on some of the most important commissions in the city, and Wyeth joined Frank Upman, Gilbert LaCoste Rodier, and Louis Justement in co-designing the Longworth House Office Building.
[67][68] One of Wyeth's few major commissions during this period was a group of homes on Whitehaven Street NW, near the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. (then under construction).
A group of notable Washingtonians—including Senator Frederick H. Gillett, Colonel Reginald S. Huidekoper, and Commander Paul Bastedo—asked Wyeth to design large houses, all in the Georgian style, to occupy this block.
[70][f] With the start of the Great Depression in the United States in the fall of 1929, Wyeth received far fewer architectural commissions.
The northwest corner of the square itself had long been occupied by a small, Neoclassical structure housing the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Once the building was 'definitely to become a reality' with the passage of Resolution 28 in 1924, Brooke informed the memorial commission that Nathan C. Wyeth and Horace W. Peaslee had agreed to act as his associates in preparing the plans.
It is not entirely clear what roles Wyeth and Peaslee played in designing the memorial; except for the inclusion of their names on some of the 1924 and 1925 drawings and the base inscription, they are rarely mentioned in connection with project, and what contractual arrangements were made with them are not known.
[107] It is widely assumed that, as Municipal Architect, Wyeth designed Thomas Jefferson Junior High School.
[10] Both The New York Times and The Evening Star also assume Wyeth designed the structure, although they erroneously report it was a high school.
[10][17][19][63][109] But Wyeth told a subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Appropriations in March 1934 that he was only a consulting architect on the structure.
[110] Although The New York Times claimed in his obituary that Wyeth designed the Canadian Embassy (now Uzbekistan's) at 1746 Massachusetts Avenue NW,[19] but in fact the building was designed by architect Jules Henri de Sibour in 1909 for Clarence Moore and his wife, Mabelle Swift Moore (heir to the Swift meatpacking fortune).
