Charles Adams Platt, the son of John Henry Platt and Mary Elizabeth Cheney Platt, was born in 1861 in Manhattan. Although best remembered today for his landscape and country house designs, he was also nationally known for his etchings, landscape paintings, commercial architecture, and institutional projects. He was largely self-taught in each of these disciplines, building his success on his ability to reconceive the classical tradition in architecture for the needs and desires of his wealthy, powerful clients.

Platt continued to design country houses throughout his career, but he devoted much of his time to important urban and institutional commissions after 1920. Many of these commissions came from the Vincent Astor estate office, which employed Platt from 1906 through 1932, and also from residential clients with institutional interests. Previous patron Charles Lang Freer commissioned Platt to design the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1913, the first of Platt’s nine museum commissions. Platt also completed or consulted on several large-scale campus planning projects, most notably for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and for Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

Historical photographs & biographies for Mr. Platt & Mrs. Shipman are courtesy of the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library at Columbia University.  For further information on their archives, visit the following website;

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/avery/da/platt.html