Trowbridge & Livingston

Trowbridge & Livingston was an architectural practice based in New York City in the early 20th century. The firm's partners were Samuel Beck Parkman Trowbridge (1862-1925) and Goodhue Livingston (1867-1951).

Trowbridge's father was a military engineer, who oversaw construction of Fort Totten Battery, and repairs to Fort Schuyler during the American Civil War. After the War, he became professor of dynamic engineering at Yale.

Trowbridge himself studied at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. On graduating in 1883, he attended Columbia University, and later studied abroad at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. On his return to New York, he entered the office of George B. Post.

Goodhue Livingston received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia during the same period Trowbridge was at the school. In 1894, Trowbridge, Livingston and Stockton B. Colt formed a partnership that lasted until 1897 when Colt left, and the firm became Trowbridge & Livingston.

The firm designed several notable public and commercial buildings in the city. Among the most famous are the neo-baroque St Regis Hotel (1904) and the former department store for B. Altman and Company (1905), both on Fifth Avenue; the 37-storey Bankers Trust Company Building (1912) at 14 Wall Street; and the J. P. Morgan Building (1913), across the street at 23 Wall Street.

Their practice extended to townhouses on Manhattan's Upper East Side, of which 11 East 91st Street and 49 East 68th Street (1914) remain. The New York Society Library, a lending library with a long genteel tradition in New York, received a building designed to look like the neighboring townhouses, at 53 East 79th Street.

Other projects in New York included

*Engine Company 7, Ladder Company 1, FDNY (1905), 100 Duane Street;
*Six Times Square (1906);
*Extension to the New York Stock Exchange (1923);
*44 Wall Street (1927);
*The Hayden Planetarium (1935) at the American Museum of Natural History, West 81st Street and Central Park West.

Outside the city Trowbridge & Livingston designed
*The Gulf Building, now Gulf Tower (1932), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in association with E. P. Mellon;
*The Oregon State Capitol (1936-38) in Salem, in association with Francis Keally.

External links

* [http://www.emporis.com/en/cd/cm/?id=100349 Emporis: Trowbridge & Livingston]
* [http://www.nyc-architecture.com/ARCH/ARCH-TrowbridgeLivingston.htm NYC Architecture: Trowbridge & Livingston]