Bruce Price - Biography

Biography

Born in Cumberland, Maryland, Bruce Price practiced briefly in Baltimore and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, before moving to New York in 1877. Price married Josephine Lee of Wilkes-Barre. His daughter Emily Price Post, was the author of novels and, later, books on etiquette.

Early in his career, Price worked on a series of domestic projects which culminated in the design and layout of Tuxedo Park, a vacation community in New York. The Shingle style houses Price built at Tuxedo, with their compact massing and axial plans, influenced several young architects including Frank Lloyd Wright.

After four years of internship (1864–68) in the office of the Baltimore architects Niernsee & Neilson, he began his professional work in Baltimore with Ephraim Francis Baldwin as a partner. Following a brief study trip to Europe, he opened an office in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he practiced from 1873 to 1876. He then settled in New York, where he designed many office buildings, among them the American Surety Building, the St. James Building, and the International Bank. One of the residential works which made him famous was the laying out of Georgian Court, the neo-Georgian residence of George Jay Gould I in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Price invented, patented, and built the parlor bay-window cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad and for the Boston and Albany. This work prompted the Canadian Pacific Railways to consider his portfolio. He designed the Château Frontenac in Quebec for the railway (arguably the structure Price is most identified with), as well as the first Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta and many other hotels and stations. He also collaborated with sculptor Daniel Chester French on the Richard Morris Hunt Memorial (1898) set into the wall of New York's Central Park, and several memorial buildings at Yale University.

He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1890), and belonged to the Architectural League of New York as well. He is buried, along with his wife and son, in Hollenbach Cemetery in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.