George A. Fuller - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Fuller was born in Templeton, Massachusetts, near Worcester. After graduating from Andover College, he took a course in architecture at the Boston School of Technology and then started in the office of his uncle, J.E. Fuller, an architect in Worcester, Massachusetts. Fuller soon entered the office of Peabody & Stearns – a firm which specialized in building mansions for the rich in Newport, Rhode Island – where he soon developed a strong interest in the details of erecting a building, and was particularly interested in "skyscrapers", the name recently given to the tall buildings than had been made possible by Elisha Otis' invention of the safety elevator. Through Fuller's hard work and diligence, at the age of twenty-five he was made a partner and placed in charge of Peabody & Stearn's New York office.

In New York, Fuller's design for a new club house for the Union League Club of New York, a Queen Anne mansion for the site at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street, won over eight other designs, including those submitted by noted architects Richard Morris Hunt and Charles McKim and William Mead. Fuller also designed the United Bank Building, a nine-story building at Wall Street and Broadway, although he left Peabody & Stearns shortly after construction began, having spent four years there.