Eric G. Flannagan, Sr. (1892-1970) was an architect and engineer practicing most of his life in North Carolina. He specialized in institutional buildings, especially hospitals and schools, but his work also included houses, churches, stores, and offices.
Eric G. Flannagan, Sr., was born on July 18, 1892, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He received technical training at the Miller boarding school in Albemarle, Virginia, from which he was a high school graduate in 1912. He graduated as a draftsman from corespondence school in 1914. He married Beryl Morris on June 26, 1915. Flannagan gained on-the-job training as a draftsman and mechanical engineer in New York and Virginia before settling in Henderson, North Carolina, in 1922.
Flannagan established an architecture and engineering firm that same year. He was a registered architect and professional engineer in both North Carolina and Virginia. Most of the buildings he designed were in North Carolina, but some were also constructed in the state of his birth. The firm specialized in institutional buildings, especially hospitals and schools, but work also included houses, churches, stores, and offices. Governor Bob Scott appointed Flannagan to the North Carolina Architectural Examination and Registration Board, for which he served as vice president in 1955-1956. He retired from his firm on December 31, 1964, leaving it's continued operation to his sons Eric G. Flannagan, Jr., and Stephen G. Flannagan. The elder Flannagan continued to serve as a consultant until he died on April 15, 1970.
Among the prominent buildings designed by Flannagan were the First United Methodist Church in Henderson, the Henderson High School, the Randolph County Hospital in Asheboro, Asheboro High School, Roses 5-10-25 store and offices in Henderson, and municipal buildings in Henderson and Roanoke Rapids. He designed several buildings for East Carolina University in Greenville over a twenty-year period.
From the guide to the Eric G. Flannagan Papers, 1922 - 1989, (Special Collections Research Center)
