Meade & Hamilton
Frank B. Meade, (6 January 1867-March 1947), was an 1888 graduate of MIT and helped design some buildings at the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Frank’s grandfather, William Gale Meade, was an architect- builder for 25 years in Huron County, Ohio.
Frank Meade was a prominent architect active in Cleveland from 1895 until the 1930s that designed more than 800 homes in historical revival styles, many of them in partnership with James M. Hamilton, who also attended MIT in the late 1890s and moved to Cleveland in 1901.
The architects met when Hamilton was hired at Meade-Garfield; Meade’s partner, Abram Garfield, was the grandson of President James A. Garfield. Meade also played a leading role in developing the GROUP PLAN in Cleveland. Filling the vacancy on the Group Plan Commission created by the death of Jhn M. Carrere in 1911, he served alongside the prominent architect Frederick Law Olmstead of Boston and sculptor Arnold Brunner of New York City.
Meade was a member and past president of the American Institute of Architects, Cleveland Chapter. Today, dozens of Meade and Hamilton homes of traditional revival styles still stand proudly as a testament to the enduring appeal of their work.
During their thirty-year collaboration, the two architects designed many residences for Cleveland industrialists and professionals in the developing well-to-do suburbs of Wade Park, Lakewood, Bratenahl, Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights where excellent eclectic architecture flourished. Among the best eclectic architects were Meade and Hamilton. In addition to their residential practice, Meade and Hamilton completed six club buildings. The firm designed more than eight hundred homes between Buffalo and Dayton, and beyond in Detroit and even Tacoma.
- Detroit’s grandest homes were built in the Boston-Edison district where Meade and Hamilton designed a white stucco Mediterranean villa-style mansion in 1914 for Sebastian Spering Kresge, founder of the five-and-dime empire S.S. Kresge Corp. (later Kmart).
Other known Meade and Hamilton-designed buildings in Buffalo, New York:
- John Philip and Anna Weyerhaeuser estate “Haddaway Hall”, NR 1983, Tacoma, WA.; F.B. Meade and James Hamilton, of Cleveland, Ohio, Architects; Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr., Charles Olmstead and T.B. Morrow, Landscape Architects, 1922. English Tudor house and gardens.
- Knox Summer Estate Main House EAST AURORA
- Walter P. Cooke House, 155 Summer Street, 1914, Tudor; lawyer, chairman of the board of the Marine Trust Company 1928-31, played a leading role in the reconstruction of post-world war I Europe, assumed the responsibility for making the dream of a “greater university” a reality at UB.
- Frank Goodyear Jr., 672 Delaware Avenue, 1917 , brick multi-purpose building with indoor tennis court, squash court, dressing rooms, second floor living room and kitchen; now an office space for the Red Cross behind the Clement Mansion
- Smith M. Flickinger, 68 Rumsey Road, c. 1926, English Tudor; international food wholesaler and distributor, founder of the Red & White private label and retail grocer’s association of 8,000 independently owned stores across North America
- Wanakah Country Club, 1926, Derby, NY. “Shinnecock” styled club house