McKim, Charles Follen, 1847–1909, American architect, b. Chester co., Pa., studied (1867–70) at the École des Beaux-Arts. He was one of the founders of the firm of McKim, Mead, and Bigelow, which in 1879 became McKim, Mead, and White (see William Rutherford Mead Mead, William Rutherford, 1846–1928, American architect, b. Brattleboro, Vt. He entered the office of Russell Sturgis in New York City. In 1872 he began to practice architecture with C. F.
..... Click the link for more information. and Stanford White White, Stanford, 1853–1906, American architect, b. New York City; son of Richard Grant White. In 1872 he entered the office of Gambrill and Richardson in Boston, at the time when H. H. Richardson was at the peak of his fame.
..... Click the link for more information. ). A vast number of important commissions came into the firm's offices, in which McKim's spirit and taste were the controlling forces. Following a policy of adhering to classical architecture and its Renaissance derivatives, the partners erected a long series of buildings with a restrained classical sobriety that turned the tide away from the vagaries of the prevailing romanticism. Early examples of the style were the old Madison Square Garden (1891, now demolished), New York City, and the Boston Public Library (1888–95). McKim was influential in the development of the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, for which he built the Agricultural Palace. He designed a fine series of clubhouses in New York City, of which the Harvard Club and the University Club are two; a number of buildings for Columbia Univ., including the present-day Low Memorial Library; the Pennsylvania RR station (1904–10); the Pierpont Morgan Library; and numerous fine commercial and residential works. His restorations include the work on Thomas Jefferson's buildings at the Univ. of Virginia and on the White House at Washington, D.C. McKim was associated with D. H. Burnham, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and F. L. Olmsted, Jr., on the Senate Park Commission, which drew up plans for the development of Washington and the District of Columbia. He was first president of the American Academy in Rome, to the founding of which he had devoted many years of zealous effort.

McKim, Charles Follen

(born Aug. 24, 1847, Chester County, Pa., U.S.—died Sept. 14, 1909, St. James, Long Island, N.Y.) U.S. architect. He was educated at Harvard University and in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1879 he joined William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White to found McKim, Mead & White, the most successful U.S. architectural firm of its time. Until 1887 the firm excelled at Shingle style residences. In later years it championed the formal Renaissance tradition and its Classical antecedents, helping to inspire a Neoclassical revival. Among the widely admired examples of McKim's formal planning are the Boston Public Library (1887), the Columbia University Library (1893), the building program of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893, with Daniel H. Burnham and Richard Morris Hunt), and in New York City the Morgan Library (1903) and the magnificent Pennsylvania Railway Station (1904–10; demolished 1963).

McKim, Charles Follen (1847–1909) architect; born at Isabella Furnace, Pa. He studied at Harvard and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. The addition of Stanford White to his partnership with William Rutherford Mead launched McKim, Mead and White (1879), designers of more than 1,000 public, commercial, and residential buildings. McKim was an elegant classical designer; his work includes the Boston Public Library (1887–95) and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (1902–07).