Mayers Murray & Phillip

Mayers, Murray & Phillip was an architecture firm in New York city and the successor firm to Goodhue Associates, after Bertram Goodhue's unexpected death in 1924. The principals were Francis L.S. Mayers, Oscar Harold Murray, and Hardie Phillip.^[1]

The firm was initially occupied with executing Goodhue's unfinished projects and designs, such as eleven buildings on the Caltech campus alone. Buildings credited to the firm reflect Goodhue's characteristic massing and incorporation of ornament by longtime collaborators. Of the three, Hardie Phillip is solely credited with completing the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

For the 1929 Church of the Heavenly Rest at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City, the firm completed a steel-frame, simplified Neo-Gothic limestone structure on land sold by the Carnegie family. The church features integrated architectural sculpture by Lee Lawrie in the form of Moses and John the Baptist emerging from the stonework, although most of the sculptural program was never executed.^[2]

The design of the 1931 Oriental Institute on the grounds of the University of Chicago partly reflects the Egyptian Revival craze of the 1920s on a particularly appropriate building. A bas-relief above the door, designed by Institute director James Henry Breasted, depicts various symbolic icons and hieroglyphics, figures including Herodotus and Julius Caesar, and includes an image of Goodhue's Nebraska State Capitol. Goodhue's own Rockefeller Chapel is nearby.

For the 1939 World's Fair, Mayers, Murray & Phillip designed the Medicine and Public Health Building with interior murals by Hildreth Meiere, and three large allegorical sculptures to represent American virtues: Humility (the Devil and Texan folklore figure Strap Buckner), Efficiency (Paul Bunyan), and Benevolence (Johnny Appleseed).

A surviving portion of Mayers, Murray & Phillip's archive, including architectural drawings and photographs, is held by the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "CLIO: Columbia University Libraries online catalog: Mayers, Murray & Phillip architectural records and papers". http://clio.cul.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBRecID=7395868&v2=1. Retrieved 2010-02-25. 
2. ^ Gray, Christopher. New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan’s Significant Buildings and Landmarks (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003), p. 280.