Wilson Eyre Jr. (October 30, 1858 – October 23, 1944) was an American architect, teacher and writer who practiced in the Philadelphia area. He is known for his deliberately informal and welcoming country houses, and for being an innovator in the Shingle Style.
In 1877, he joined the offices of James Peacock Sims in Philadelphia, and took over the firm following Sims's death in 1882.
In 1911, he entered into partnership with John Gilbert McIlvaine, and opened a second office in New York City. The firm, Eyre & McIlvaine. continued until 1939.[1]
For his most important early houses, "Anglecot" (1883) and "Farwood" (1884–85), he used a simple plan: a line of asymmetrical public rooms stretching along a single axis, extending even outside to a piazza. Like many Shingle Style architects, he employed the open living hall as an organizing element: all of the main first floor rooms connecting to the hall, often through large openings. He used staircases to extend the space of the hall to the second floor.
Eyre emerged as a leader in the international country life movement, lecturing in England, and corresponding with British and German architects. He was one of the first U.S. architects to be featured in the Arts & Crafts magazine International Studio, and he was published by Hermann Muthesius, the chronicler of the so-called "English" house of the turn of the century.
Prior to Frank Lloyd Wright's rise to prominence, Eyre was arguably the best-known domestic architect in the U.S. among foreign designers. His post-1890 country houses, such as "Allgates" (1910, expanded by Eyre & McIlvaine 1917) are among the most accomplished American essays in the restrained stucco cottage idiom popularized by C.F.A. Voysey and Ernest Newton in England.[3]
He was one of the founders and editors of House & Garden magazine.[1] He designed many distinctive gardens with his residences, and wrote extensively of the need for interaction between rooms and outdoor spaces. Later house plans often featured loggias, terraces and porches connected to each major room on the ground floor to maximize the experience of the garden from inside the house.
Eyre was also renowned for his distinctive artistic drawings, often in watercolor. He used charcoal, pencil and ink with equal facility, and drew bird's eye perspectives with amazing speed. His extant drawings are now housed in the Architectural Archives at the University of Pennsylvania. He was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1893.
In August 1914, he was stranded in Europe along with thousands of Americans attempting to escape World War I. Eyre returned to the United States in late September and shared a cabin with Augustus P. Gardner, a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts.[4]
Mrs. Evan Randolph house, 218 W. Chestnut Hill Avenue, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1906)[19]
Clover Hill Farm, 910 Penn Valley Rd Media, Pennsylvania (1907)
"Lycoming," The Residence of William Jay Turner, 3005 W. School House Lane, Philadelphia, PA, (1907). A Philadelphia Register of Historic Places nomination for this property, authored by Oscar Beisert, Architectural Historian and Historic Preservationist, was filed on October 29, 2018, by the Keeping Society of Philadelphia. A demolition permit was filed by the property owner the same day and the building was demolished soon afterwards for an athletic field.[20]
^ abcWilson Eyre Biography at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
^Vincent J. Scully Jr. The Shingle Style and the Stick Style (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955, revised 1971), p. 124, figs. 97, 98, 100 & 101.
^See Mark Alan Hewitt, The Architect and the American Country House, 1890-1940 (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press: 1990): pages 25-67.
^Constance Gardner, ed., Some Letters of August Peabody Gardner (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 91.
^Randolph house at Chestnut Hill Historical Society
^Oscar Beisert (June 29, 2018). "Philadelphia Register of Historic Places Nomination: "Lycoming," The Residence of William Jay Turner, 3005 School House Lane, Philadelphia, PA". Keeping Society of Philadelphia. Retrieved November 27, 2020.
Wilson Eyre architectural drawings and papers, circa 1877–1945.Held by the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.