Zantzinger, Borie and Medary was an American architecture firm that operated from 1905 to 1950 in Philadelphia. It specialized in institutional and civic projects. For most of its existence, the partners were Clarence C. Zantzinger,[1] Charles Louis Borie Jr.,[2] and Milton Bennett Medary,[3] all Philadelphians.
The firm was a launching pad for numerous architects of note, including Dominique Berninger (1898–1949) and Louis Kahn (1901–1974).
Zantzinger and Borie
The firm was established in 1905 as Zantzinger and Borie. Zantzinger and Borie were involved in years of preliminary design work on the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The 1911 commission was shared between Z&B and Horace Trumbauer. Most of the credit for the final building, completed in 1928, is given to architects Howell Lewis Shay and Julian Abele, both from Trumbauer's firm.[4]
After Medary joined in 1910, the firm was renamed Zantzinger, Borie & Medary.
The firm was the first recorded American employer of French-born American architect Dominique Berninger, who worked there from 1925 to 1932.[6] During this time he served as job captain for their design project of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, a project that cost around $1,250,000.[6] Louis Kahn and Berninger had met while working at the firm and went on to form the Architectural Research Group (ARG) in Philadelphia, a short-lived collaborative society from 1932 to 1935 before Kahn took a job with the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, while Berninger commenced his own practice in 1933 and later formed the partnership of Berninger & Bower (fl.1935 – 1945), the predecessor firm of Haag & d'Entremont (fl.1946 – 1988).[6]
1918: Federal Ordnance Plant Housing, Neville Island, Ohio River, Pennsylvania.[9] The $50,000,000 commission was for 15,000 homes to house 20-25,000 workers.
^Maynard, William Barksdale, Princeton: America's Campus, (Penn State Press, 2012), 248.
^Fairmount Park Association, Sculpture of a City – Philadelphia’s Treasures in Bronze and Stone, Fairmount Park Association, Walker Publishing Co., Inc, NY. NY, 1974.
^"The Detroit Institute of Arts: The Architecture, Published for The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1928
^Bok, Edward W., America's Taj Mahal; The Singing Tower of Florida, The Georgia Marble Company, Tate, Georgia, 1929
^Block, Jean. "The uses of Gothic: planning and building the campus of the University of Chicago, 1892-1932", The University of Chicago Library, Chicago, 1983.
^Elizabeth Mills Brown, New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design, (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1976).
