H. Neill Wilson started his career working for his father, a prominent Cincinnati architect, in 1873.[1] He moved on after seven years and established himself in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1879 where a building boom was under way.[2]
In Ohio, Wilson's Rookwood Pottery building remains, although it was expanded after initial construction, as well as the Glendale Lyceum (ca. 1891) building.
His "splendid" Berkshire, County "cottages" were featured in an illustrated book by Jackson and Gilder.[1] The Shadowbrook residence where Andrew Carnegie also lived and died was particularly massive. It was destroyed by a fire in 1956. It was rebuilt, but the newer structure is not considered[by whom?] up to par with the original.[1][4]
In redesigning the 1773 Red Lion Inn building in 1897 following "a devastating fire" that started in the pastry kitchen, Wilson designed an 80-room building with a separate kitchen building.[5]
Glendale Town Hall and Police Station of 1871, an Italianate architecture building, is his earliest credited work. It is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.[7] It was replaced as town hall by Samuel Hannaford’s building that remains in use.[1]
Shadowbrook (1893),[6] also known as Shadowbrook Castle,[1] an estate in Lenox, Massachusetts that was commissioned by Anson Phelps Stokes in 1891 at a cost of one million dollars. It was purchased in 1917 by Andrew Carnegie,[3] who died there in 1919. The 100 room house burned in 1956 and was rebuilt for the Society of Jesus "with lesser quality of construction".[1] It may have been the largest private residence ever built in America when it was completed.[6] The Shadow Brook Farm area on Lenox West Road on MA 183 near Bucks Lane in Stockbridge Massachusetts was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.[7]
Blythewood (Massachusetts), a 450-acre (1.8 km2) estate that included outbuildings, laundry facilities, servants quarters, superintendent's residence, two barns, two farm houses, dairy, coach house, wood house, gate house, greenhouse, and gardener's residence. The cottage had 12 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, electric lights and internal and a contemporary modern style.[6]
Ten Eyck Hotel, later known as the Sheraton Ten Eyck, in Albany, New York.[3] A "grand old" hotel building that catered to elites in its day before it was imploded in the mid-1970s as part of the Hotel Ten Eyck Project to make way a bank building. A brown brick Hilton Hotel took "its revered place in the old heart of the capital city" before Omni Hotels took over the property which later became a Crowne Plaza hotel.
William Russell Allen House (1885) in Pittsfield.[1] Built as a summer cottage for Allen, a Missouri railroad and a granite quarry owner, it is "a rare example of American Queen Anne architecture because of its terra cottatile exterior, the hand-painted ceiling, the fireplaces with polished onyx marble and cast bronze, and stained glass windows."[10] The William Russell Allen House at 359 East Street in Pittsfield Massachusetts is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[7]
W.P. Burbank House (1887) in Pittsfield[1] It was included in American Architect and Building News VOLUME XXII JULY-DECEMBER, 1887 (615).[11]
^"The architect who drew the plans was H. Neil Wilson of
Pittsfield, Mass., but Mrs. Atkins-McKay's was the real planning mind
of the whole structure." [1] May 17, 1904 Hartford Courant
