Ellett, Thomas Harlan (American architect, 1880-1951)

Born in Red Oak, Iowa in 1880, Thomas Harlan Ellett studied architecture at the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago (certificate 1902) and at the University of Pennsylvania under Paul Philippe Cret and George Walter Dawson (graduated 1906). After two years of travel and study in Paris and Rome, he worked for four years for McKim, Mead and White. In 1915, Ellett established his private practice in New York City. He built his reputation through a series of distinctive country estates built in the New York area and beyond, reaching as far as Louisiana and Illinois. In 1922 he won honorable mention in the Chicago Tribune Building Competition. Important public commissions include the Saint Mihiel American Cemetery & Memorial, designed for the American Battle Monuments Commission (completed 1927). Ellett won the Architectural League of New York's, 1928 Silver Medal for the J. Seward Johnson House, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the 1933 Gold Medal for the Cosmopolitan Club of New York. During the Great Depression (1935-37), Ellett worked as a consulting architect on many post office projects. Among his many designs, the Huntington, Long Island and Bronx, New York are notable. Late works include the Club House of the 1939 New York World's Fair and the (unbuilt) headquarters of the National Academy of Design 1946-48. Ellett died in Garrison, New York in 1951.