Hamlin, Talbot, 1889-1956

Talbot Faulkner Hamlin was born on June 16, 1889 in New York City. He was the second of the four children of Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin (1855-1926), professor of architecture at Columbia University, and Minnie Florence Marston Hamlin (1859-?). Hamlin's formal education began in the Trinity School in New York in 1898. His parents transferred him to the Horace Mann School in New York in 1900, from which he graduated in 1906. Hamlin went on to Amherst College and received his Bachelor of Arts in classics and English in 1910. In the fall of 1910, Hamlin enrolled in the School of Architecture at Columbia University and began his forty-six year association with the university. He received his Bachelor of Architecture in 1914.

Upon graduation, Hamlin was hired as a draftsman in the New York architectural firm of Murphy and Dana. He became a partner of the firm in 1920 and the firm's name was changed to Murphy, McGill and Hamlin, following Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s (1879-1933) departure in 1921. The firm lasted until 1924, when Henry Killam Murphy (1877-1954) withdrew and the firm became known as McGill and Hamlin. This partnership with Henry J. McGill (d. 1953) ended in 1930 when Hamlin began his own firm, which lasted until the Depression, when commissions became scarce. During his years as a professional architect, Hamlin participated in various projects, mainly located in the United States and Asia, including China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines. The bulk of his projects in the United States were residential and institutional (schools and churches), while projects in Asia were institutional (schools and monuments) and commercial. Although more than once Hamlin expressed his interests in modern architecture through his writing, his design showed a disparity: the United States works were mainly in the eclectic historical style that was still dominant at that time, while the Asian works incorporated indigenous detailing within conventional Beaux-Arts compositional arrangements.

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