Griffith Thomas

Dining room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, 1859

Griffith Thomas (1820—1879) was an American architect. He partnered with his father, Thomas Thomas, at the architecture firm of T. Thomas and Son.^[1]

Architecture writer Christopher Gray called him "one of the most prolific architects of the period" (the mid-19th century).^[2] The American Institute of Architects in 1908 called him "the most fashionable architect of his generation."^[3]

Many of his notable buildings are found in New York City, including the St. Nicholas Hotel; the central section of the Astor Library (1859), at 444 Lafayette Street; the Arnold Constable Building (1869), at Broadway and West 19th Street; the old New York Life Insurance Building (1870), at 346 Broadway; and the Gunther Building (1872), at 469-475 Broome Street.^[4] He was also the architect of the Fifth Avenue Hotel (1859), which was replaced in 1909 by Robert Maynicke's Toy Center Building,The Restoration Hardware Building 935 Broadway (159 Fifth Avenue); and of Pike's Opera House, which was later renamed the Grand Opera House, and was destroyed in 1960.^[1][5]

Griffith Thomas was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York in 1879. His own marble monument is simple in comparison to the ornate structures he built during his lifetime.^[6]

Notes

1. "Correspondence: The Death of Mr. Griffith Thomas", The American Architect and Building News Vol. 5 No. 161, January 25, 1879, pp. 29–30. Online at Google Books.
2. "On Canal Street, a Sooty Survivor of a Grander Time", by Christopher Gray, New York Times, March 26, 2006.
3. Architectural Record No. 24, American Institute of Architects, p. 303.
4. New York: A Guide to the Metropolis, by Gerard R. Wolfe
5. "A New Metropolitan Theater—Pike's Opera House", New-York Tribune, July 1, 1867, p. 4, col. 6
6. Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery: New York's Buried Treasure, by Jeffrey I. Richman

External links

• "The Gunther Building", New York Architectural Images.
• "Arnold Constable Building", by edenpictures, on Flickr.
• "The Old Astor Library, Now the Joseph Papp Public Theater", by Christopher Gray, New York Times, February 10, 2002.
• "Former New York Life Insurance Company Building", The Masterpiece Next Door, archived by Internet Archive's Wayback Machine on December 7, 2008.
• Green-Wood Cemetery Burial Search