Mills & Greenleaf

Mills and Greenleaf was an American architectural firm in the early twentieth-century New York City, established in 1906 by J. Laying Mills and John Cameron Greenleaf. The firm practiced out of 345 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York City.^[1]

Mills had graduated from Yale University in 1901, where he may have met Greenleaf, who was two years his senior and graduated from Yale University Sheffield Scientific School in 1899), before studying architecture at Columbia University from 1899 to 1901 and then at the Ecole des Beaux Arts from 1903 to 1905.^[1]

Greenleaf returned to New York in August 1905, worked in New York firm before establishing Mills & Greenleaf.^[1] As Mills & Greenleaf, the firm was many times awarded. In 1908, by the Board of Awards, in Albany, New York, and judged to be among the most meritorious designs for a competition entered for a state prison.^[2] They were referenced as among the associate architects attached to the new state prison erected in Peekskill, New York, located on an unusually high plateau overlooking the Hudson River.^[3]

Mills & Greenleaf were selected “from the sixty-two designs submitted by the leading architects of the country for the great water gate and Fulton memorial which is to be erected in Riverside Drive between 114th and 116th Streets at an approximate cost of $2,500,000. The just of award of the Robert Fulton Monument Association announced yesterday at the Engineers’ Club the names of the ten successful competitors in the preliminary competition. The jury of award consisted of two architects, Thomas Hastings and George B. Post; two laymen, Robert Fulton Cutting and Isaac Guggenheim, and Lansing C. Holden as advisory architects. Each of these ten competitors received a prize of $500. The successful contestants are Charles P. Huntington, Mills & Greenleaf. Lawrence F. Peck, J.H. Freedlander, Bosworth & Holden, and Harold Van Buren Magonigle of New York City….”^[4][5][6]

Works

• 1907: 171 Second Street, a six-storey brick-and-stone tenement for Margaret W. Folsom of Waverly, Massachusetts for the expected cost of $31,000.^[7][8]
• 1908: Associate architects attached to the new Sing Sing Prison Competition (Peekskill, New York)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Osborne A. Day, ed., Decenial Record: Yale University Sheffield Scientific School, Class of 1899 (New Haven, Connecticut: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company, 1910), p.45-46
2. ^ "Building News: New York" The American Architect and Building News’’, July 29, 1908, p.17, Contained in The American Architect and Building News, Vol. XCIV: July to December 1908 (New York)
3. ^ ”Communication: By Mr. Franklin B. Ware, New York State Architect, Addressed to the Board of Awards, New Sing Sing Prison Competition: Illustrations” The American Architect and Building News, July 15, 1908, p.23, Contained in The American Architect and Building News, Vol. XCIV: July to December 1908 (New York)
4. ^ "Fulton Monument Awards, Prizes Given to Architects Winning Preliminary Contest." New York Times July 7, 1910 (Retrieved 25 April 2011) Filed in “PLAN TO CALL OUT 3,000 MORE STRIKERS; Union Ready to Punish Manu- facturers Who Have Been Do- ing Non-Union Work Secretly”, Excerpted: “….The successful contestants are Charles P. Huntingtoh, Mills & Greenleaf. Lawrence F. Feck, j J-I. Freedlander, Bosworth & Holden, and Harold Van Buren....”
5. ^ See also ”Vitrified Clay Curbing Selected for Streets and Roads – Fulton Memorial, Water Gate”, Engineering News, Vol. 63: No. 2, p.44 (January 13, 1910)
6. ^ See also Fourteenth Annual Report of the New York State Commission of Prisons for the Year of 1908: Transmitted to the Legislature February 23, 1909 p.42.
7. ^ ”Projected Buildings: Borough of Manhattan: South of 14th Street,” Vol. 80, No. 2066: Page 614; in Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide Vol 80, No. 2051 (July 6, 1907) to No. 2076 (Dec. 28, 1907), (New York, F. W. Dodge Corp.),
8. ^ Office for Metropolitan History, "Manhattan NB Database 1900-1986," (Accessed 15 Apr 2011).