Ralph Thomas Walker

Ralph Thomas Walker (1889–1973) was an American architect.

In 1907, at the age of 18, Walker was apprenticed to Providence, Rhode Island architect Howard K. Hilton. The three year apprenticeship paid one dollar a week for the first year, two a week for the second year and three a week for the third. While working there Walker attended classes at MIT and after two years had moved up to a design position, paying nine dollars a week.

Following his sojourn with Hilton and Jackson, where he met his future wife, Stella Forbes, Walker was employed in 1916 by McKenzie, Voorhees and Gmelin, an important New York firm that was the successor firm to the one begun by Cyrus L. W. Eidlitz in 1885. Walker was to remain there for the remainder of his career. Walker's 1923 design of the Barclay-Vesey Building in New York City is credit as being the first skyscraper in which the New York 1916 Zoning Ordinances were treated as a design asset. His design was to lead to a generation of skyscraper built using the step back principle. This building was also arguably the first art-deco skyscraper.

During the 1930s as art deco waned, Walker was deeply involved with the planning of the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago and in the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Walker was an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and became its president in 1949. In 1957, on the occasion of the AIA's 100th anniversary, it voted Walker architect of the century. Three years later, in 1960, Walker resigned from the AIA after a conflict over professional ethics.His self-published booklet "Ralph Walker; The American Institute of Architects - 1921 - 1961" begins, :On December 30, 1960, after forty yeas of membership, I severed all connections with the American Institute of Architects, and I am sending this account of the reasons I did so to all members of the College of Fellows.There then follows a 57 page discussion of what was one of the most notorious incidents in that organization's history, the crux of which was that a member of Walker's firm acted in an "unprofessional manner." This involved the charge that his firm had taken a contract that already belonged to another firm, and much of the correspondence surrounding the incident are included.

Walker ends with::May I say, finally, that I have no illusions of grandeur; quite to the contrary, I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good. When I severe my connections with the A.I.A. I do so with my own self respect , as a matter of pride and I am sure within your knowledge of my character. I completely scorn the falsifying, the sanctimonious, the cheap and the shoddy.

elected designs

(all in New York City unless otherwise indicated)
* The New York Telephone Company, aka the Barclay-Vesey Building and now the Verizon Building, 1923 and badly damaged in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
* Western Union Building, now 60 Hudson Street (1928–30)
* AT&T's building on Broadway (1930–32)
* Irving Trust Building, now One Wall Street (1928–31)

References

* Stern, Gilmartin & Mellins, New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars, Rizzoli International Publications, NY, NY 1987
* Walker, Ralph, "Ralph Walker; The American Institute of Architects - 1921 - 1961", self-published
* Walker, Ralph "Ralph Walker: Architect, of Voorhees Gmelin & Walker, Voorhees Walker Foley & Smith, Voorhees Walker Smith & Smith ", Henanan House, New York, 1957