William Adams Delano

An architect associated with the Beaux-Arts style, William Adams Delano, FAIA, earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1895 and worked at the New York architecture firm Carrère & Hastings. He also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, receiving a diploma in 1903. After returning from Europe, Delano formed his own architectural practice, Delano & Aldrich, and taught at Columbia University from 1903 to 1910. Delano’s work was far-ranging; it included homes for Otto Kahn and the Rockefeller family, academic buildings at Yale, private schools in New York City, the Union Club in New York, the American Embassy in Paris, terminals at LaGuardia and Miami airports, Epinal American Cemetery in France, the Post Office building in the Federal Triangle redevelopment, and the controversial Truman Balcony at the White House. In addition to his design work, he served on the National Capital Planning Commission and on the board of design for the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and was president of the Beaux-Arts Society of Architects. Delano’s many awards and honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Gold Medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1940, and an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1953; he was also named an officer by the French Legion of Honor and was an academician of the National Academy of Design. The Delano & Aldrich collection is located at the Avery Library, Columbia University; Delano’s papers from 1947 to 1954 are archived at the New York Historical Society.