Weber, Paul J.

Paul J. Weber, a well-known architectural photographer, was born ca. 1880 in Germany. He was married to Florence A. Weber, and the couple had two daughters. Weber worked in the Boston area during the first half of the twentieth century.

Paul J. Weber was a noted architectural photographer working in the Boston area in the first half of the twentieth century. The photographs belonging to this collection were taken of the Harvard Business School from 1927 when the campus was first opened, to 1930, when the Dean's House was completed. Included in the collection are photographs taken of the HBS campus which were commissioned by the architectural firm, McKim, Mead, and White, who designed and built the campus in 1927. There are also photographs taken to accompany two articles on the campus which appeared in the magazine Architectural Forum, New York.

The Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration had grown rapidly since its establishment in 1908. During the early experimental years it had occupied quarters in Lawrence Hall as well as dispersed locations in Harvard Yard. However, increasing enrollment by 1920 resulted in the need for the school to have its own buildings. George F. Baker, chairman of the First National Bank of New York, provided the funds for a new campus. Although Baker himself had no direct ties to Harvard, his son George Jr. was a member of the Harvard College Class of 1899 and a classmate of Wallace Donham, Dean of the Business School.

The architects of the campus were selected through a design competition. The story of the competition, the selection of McKim, Mead, and White as the winning firm, and the construction of the campus were the subject of two articles which appeared in Architectural Forum magazine in October 1927. The articles, entitled "Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration" and "The Construction and Equipment of the Harvard Graduate School of Business," were both written by Charles W. Killam, the professional advisor to the project and a professor of architecture at Harvard University. The articles are illustrated with architectural plans and with eighteen of Weber's photographs.

Weber offered copies of his prints of the HBS campus to the school in 1927. A letter from Weber to Dean Wallace Donham dated June 17, 1927 (Office of the Dean, School Correspondence 1923-1927), states: "I have just taken a very interesting and artistic series of photographs of your new buildings . . . . If you are desirous of getting any of these prints I shall be glad to let you look them over."