James Edwin R. Carpenter

James Edwin R. Carpenter. Architect of the Maury County Court House. James Carpenter was born in Columbia during the Civil War. He was educated in Columbia, and in preparation for a professional career, studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He returned to Columbia as draftsman for the Columbia Arsenal project, later Columbia Military Academy. He served one term as mayor of Columbia in 1884. During the 1890's he established an office in Norfolk, Virginia, and in his early work designed a number of business and commercial buildings. Among these were the American National Bank in Pensacola, Florida, the Empire Office Building in Birmingham, Alabama, and the Hermitage Hotel, Stahlman Building and St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. All these were erected prior to 1910. In Columbia, Mr. Carpenter designed the Maury County Courthouse, the Memorial Building, and the splendid Rosenthal home, now restored law offices at 207 West 8th Street., In New York, where Mr. Carpenter maintained practice during the last twenty years of his life, he achieved his greatest success in planning apartment houses. At least fifty of these tall modern buildings were erected from his designs on Park Avenue and the east side of Fifth Avenue. Outstanding examples were 907 Fifth Avenue, awarded the A.I.A. Gold Medal award in 1916, and 819 Park Avenue, recognized in 1926 by the New York chapter, A.I.A. by its Gold Medal award., Shortly before his death, which occurred in his office at 598 Madison Avenue following a heart attack in 1932, Mr. Carpenter collaborated with other architects in preparing plans for the huge Lincoln Building at 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. At his death he was called "the father of the modern New York apartment house".