Eames and Young

• American

Architects William Sylvester Eames (1857-1915) and Thomas Crane Young (1858-1934), both graduates of Washington University's School of Fine Arts, reunited as a partnership in 1885 some seven years after their graduation. Their earliest work together included commissions in some of St Louis' most upscale residential areas, including Charles Clark's Vandeventer Place home (published in Inland Architect in 1888, demolished 1940). Their work for Clark (a future director of the Mississippi Valley Trust) and other prominent St Louisans would help them win increasingly more prestigious work. In the early 1890s, their designs for the Cupples warehouse complex (Cupples Warehouse District, NR 6/26/1998) attracted national attention. Their first bank commission was apparently the one-story National Bank of the Republic (c 1895), also located on "the Street." Eames would go on in 1904 to become the president of the national American Institute of Architects, the first St Louisan to be elected to that position. This honor brought additional prestige - and commissions - to the firm. - NRHP, 30 October 2000