Whitney Warren

Library of Congress Photo

Quick Facts

Significance:

Architect

Place of Birth:

New York City

Date of Birth:

January 29, 1864

Place of Death:

New York City

Date of Death:

January 24, 1943

Place of Burial:

Newport, Rhode Island

Whitney Warren was an American architect who founded, with Charles Delevan Wetmore, Warren and Wetmore (1898-1928) in New York City, one of the most prolific and successful architectural practices in America.

Whitney Warren was born in New York City in 1864. He was one of nine children of George Henry Warren I (1823–1892) and Mary Caroline Phoenix Warren (1832–1901). Whitney Warren attended Columbia University for one year in 1882, and then studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Warren also worked as an apprentice in the offices of McKim, Mead & White before joining Charles Wetmore to establish the firm Warren & Wetmore. Whitney Warren was a bon vivant and active in New York Society, most notably in Stanford White's inner circle.

Warren & Wetmore's most notable early commission was the New York Yacht Club, designed in 1899. It was a place where Warren must have come into contact with many members of the Vanderbilt family. Whitney Warren enlarged Idle Hour for William K. Vanderbilt in 1903, and became a close friend of his. He later took over the design of Grand Central Station from Reed and Stem in 1906, the same year that Frederick Vanderbilt brought him in to make changes at Hyde Park. Florence Vanderbilt Twombly commissioned Warren to design her New York City townhouse on Fifth Avenue and 71st Street, and her daughter Ruth had him design a tennis court and pool house at Florham. Warren also designed houses for the next generation of Vanderbilts including 7 East 91st Street for Adele Sloane and J. Burden as well as Eagle's Nest in Centerport, Long Island, for William K. Vanderbilt Jr. In 1909, the Warren & Wetmore-designed Vanderbilt Hotel located at the corner of 34th Street and Park Avenue opened. The Vanderbilts actively supported Warren & Wetmore giving them the commission for numerous railroad stations and hotels.

In 1884, Warren married Charlotte Augusta Tooker (1864–1951) in Newport, Rhode Island. Charlotte was the eldest daughter of Gabriel Mead Tooker, a prominent New York lawyer and member of Mrs. Astor's famous Four Hundred.

Warren died after a nine-week illness on January 24, 1943 at New York Hospital in New York City. At the time of his death, Warren resided at 280 Park Avenue in New York City and was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, the Racquet and Tennis Club, and the Church and South Side Sportsmen's Clubs.

In 1917, Warren received the Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects.

Notable works by Warren and Wetmore include the New York Yacht Club (1898–9), Grand Central Terminal, New York, the Biltmore Hotel (1914), Marshall Field Building (1920), Equitable Trust Building (1918), the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Honolulu (1927), and the rebuilding of the University Library, Leuven, Belgium (1920) which had been destroyed by the Germans in World War I.