Schenck & Williams

Mutual Home Savings/ Liberty Tower (Dayton)

Schenck and Williams was an architectural firm in Dayton, Ohio. The firm's projects included the Hawthorn Hill home for Orville Wright and his sister and father, the Dayton Young Men's Christian Association Building, and the Engineers Club of Dayton building. The firm's partners were Harry J. Williams and Harry I. Schenck, both 1903 Cornell University graduates^[1] and members of the American Institute of Architects^[2] Several other Cornell graduates including Nelson J. Bell (1904), Robert E. Schenck (1912), Albert R. Reilly (1914), Wolfe Marcovitch (1915), Leslie L. Lambert (1916), Ernst W. Kurz (1917) and Ellason R. Smith (1917) came to work for the firm.^[1]

The partners were members of the Engineers Club of Dayton and designed its building in 1916. Workers completed the construction of the Engineers Club in early 1918.^[3] Harry I. Schenck was a charter club member. Architectural Record (in volume 45) included a long article about the club and its building, including a photograph and floor plans. The Club was described as a special collaboration between engineers, who supported it, and architects, and the article's author noted that it was designed in the Georgian architectural style.^[2]

Architectural Engineering (of Dayton?) Alumni News lists several architectural engineering graduates (Dan Bollinger '18 and Fred Lewis '21) as working for the firm.^[4] William Briedenback '22 went to work for Pretzinger & Musselman, a competing firm.

Projects

• Pleasant Hill United Church of Christ 10 W. Monument Street in Pleasant Hill, Ohio
• Newman-Edwards House (circa 1914) an English Tudor with French Eclectic Influence home at 60 Stoddard in Grafton Hill Dayton. Built for Theodore Newman, president of Dayton Paper Novelty Company. From 1935 to 1958 it was the home of attorney and Judge Cecil Edwards and his family, who was also one of the first airmail pilots in the country. The house features the half timbering and casement windows common to both English and French revival or period houses. The architecture is based on prototypical "design characteristics which evolved from several centuries of farm or rural domestic architecture. However, French Eclectic houses normally lack the front-facing cross gables characteristic of the Tudor style. Instead, the dominant feature here is the hip roof, which in the Medieval French countryside would have probably been constructed of thatch." The twelve room Newman-Edwards house was converted to a duplex in 1962.^[5]
• Hawthorn Hill (1912-1914) National Historic Landmark
• Engineers Club of Dayton (1918)^[3] NRHP listed
• Liberty Tower (Dayton)
• Charles F. Kettering House (1914) National Historic Landmark. Destroyed by fire in 1997; rebuilt in an unsympathetic manner.
• Facilities of Grace Church (Dayton, Ohio)
• Ashland National Bank building (1922), an 11-story bank building at the "heart of downtown" Ashland, Kentucky^[6]
• Second Church of Christ Science (circa 1923), a Neoclassical or Classical Revival church on Grand Avenue and Belmonte Park North. Schenck and Williams also designed several houses in the Grafton Hill area. The building was described by architectural historian Steve Gordon as "solid, pretentious and patriotic." The Neoclassical style gained popularity as a result of its widespread use at the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 and the Pan-American Exhibition at San Francisco in 1901. The church also has more contemporary Beaux-Arts style features, Neoclassical architecture usually being simpler or more austere. Public buildings seemed particularly suited to the robust but restrained design features of the style. Usually built of stone, this type of building often features large post and lintel Grecian forms, as apparent on the Second Church of Christ Science where four thirty foot Doric columns dominate the facade.^[5]
• Beta Theta Pi House (1927) an English Vernacular style building at Denison University. It was the first fraternity to build uphill following the 1925 plan for the new Fraternity Row.^[7]
• La Plaza Shopping Center (1937) Palm Springs
• Graphic Arts Building (1925), Dayton.^[8]
• NCR Building 26 (1938), (altered and later demolished by the University of Dayton in 2007) an Art Deco building on Stewart Street and Patterson Boulevard in Dayton. It served as a night school for NCR employees and during World War II was leased the building to the Navy to house the secret Naval Computing Machine Laboratory (NCML), where Joseph R. Desch led the development of an American version of the Bombe, a machine that decrypted German communications. The University of Dayton owned the building and wanted it demolished for a new development in 2007. Their consultant's report concluded that although Building 26 had significance because of its association with NCML and Medal for Merit recipient Joseph Desch, the building lacked integrity due to removal of much Art Deco ornamentation when it was encased on three sides by a newer building in the 1960s, concluding that Building 26 was ineligible for National Register of Historic Preservation listing. Dayton residents protested April 23, 2007 at a public hearing at Carillon Historic Park, facilitated by the Ohio Historic Preservation Office.^[9]
• Dayton Power and Light Building ^[10] 601,607-609, 613-645 E. Third St., Dayton, Ohio. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places since April 12, 2006.
• Mayflower Theater,^[11] 9 West Main Street, Troy, Ohio. Designed in October 1927 for Troy Amusement Company.

References

1. Vol. XXII No.5 October 23, 1919 Cornell Alumni News
2. Howard Dwight Smith The Engineers Club of Dayton; Schenck & Williams architects Architectural record, Volume 45American Institute of Architects McGraw-Hill, 1919 Original from the University of Michigan Digitized Dec 12, 2007
3. Engineers Club of Dayton The Engineers Club History
5. Tour Grafton Hill Preservation Dayton Inc.
6. Ashland By James Powers, Terry Baldridge
7. Beta Theta Pi Denison University
8. Montgomery County / Dayton Graphic Arts Building Ohio Historic Preservation Office press release Ohio Historical Society
9. Preservation Alerts Art Deco Society of Washington
10. Dayton Power and Light Building Group (added 2006 - District - #06000273) Also known as MOT-4716-15;MOT-4316-15 Montgomery County - 601,607-609, 613-645 E. Third St., Dayton National Register of Historic Places listing
11. Currently known as The Mayflower Arts Center