Alexander McMillan Welch

The Benjamin N. Duke House at 1009 Fifth Avenue, 1899-1901

Alexander McMillan Welch (1869 – 1943)^[1] was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition, who led the New York City firm of Welch, Smith & Provot, in partnership with Bowen B. Smith and George Provot.

Life and career

Welch, a descendant of Philip Welch, who emigrated to Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1654,^[2] graduated from Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Under the influence of his brother-in-law, Bashford Dean, Welch collected some antique swords.

The firm's trademark style of discreet brick and limestone townhouses in neo-Georgian style is embodied in the Benjamin N. Duke House at 1009 Fifth Avenue, one of a row of four houses built in 1899-1901 for the speculative builders William and Thomas Hall. Number 1009 was purchased by the tobacco magnate Benjamin Newton Duke. Similar rowhouses by Welch, Smith & Provot are 28 through 38 West 86th Street (1906–1908).

Welch was the consulting architect in restorations made to a number of designated historical landmarks, including Alexander Hamilton's Hamilton Grange in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, George Washington's Headquarters in White Plains, New York, and the Dutch Colonial Dyckman House in Inwood, Manhattan. Welch had married to Fannie Fredericka Dyckman on June 2, 1896.^[3] She and her sister Mrs Bashford Dean presented the Dyckman house to New York City in 1916.^[4][5]

Selected commissions

• The New French Hospital, 450-58 West 34th Street, New York (1905), for the French Benevolent Society,^[6] as the result of a competition supervised by A.D.F. Hamlin, Columbia University. Isolated sunrooms at the rear south-facing facade were provided for each floor. The tuberculosis ward on the top floor was isolated from the others.
• The St. Stephen's Methodist Church (1897-1898) was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.^{[7][8]:3, 6}

References

1. His portrait by Seymour Millais Stone is at the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, of which Welch was a Trustee, 1920-1943, and Chairman of the Executive Committee, 1931-1938. The Society's webpage notes his obituary, The Record, 75:1 (January 1944).
2. Alexander McMillan Welch, Philip Welch of Ipswich, Massachusetts 1654 and His Descendents, (Richmond Virginia: Byrd Press) 1947:3-16.
3. "Welch-Dyckman" The New York Times (June 3, 1896)
4. "Dutch Farmhouse a Gift to the City" The New York Times (September 30, 1915)
5. The free restoration and furnishing of the Dyckman House is described in Mason, Randall "Historic preservation, public memory and the making of modern New York City", in Page, Max and Mason Randall (eds.) Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation 2004:131ff.
6. Year Book of the Architectural League of New York, 1905.
7. "National Register of Historic Places Listings". Weekly List of Actions Taken on Properties: 5/26/14 through 5/30/14. National Park Service. 2012-02-17.
8. ""Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS)"" (Searchable database). New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2015-12-01. Note: This includes Jacqueline Peu-Duvallon (August 2011). "National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: St. Stephen's Methodist Church" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-12-01. and Accompanying photographs