Biography
Davis graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology). He began his career working as a draftsman for Louis Sullivan, along with Frank Lloyd Wright.
In 1909, he designed the Kankakee County courthouse. A year later, he was hired by Charles Comiskey to design Comiskey Park for the Chicago White Sox. To prepare for the project, Davis toured ballparks around the country with White Sox pitcher Ed Walsh. In 1914, he designed Weeghman Park for the Chicago Whales, a park which would later become Wrigley Field.
Like other South Side Chicagoans, he quietly worked at his home at 45th and Drexel in Kenwood, Chicago. He was so quiet that one family member has referred to him as "the most significant lost architect in Chicago."
Davis's wife was named Alma, and she predeceased him. Their oldest son, Zachary Taylor Davis II, was born in 1898. He worked as a salesman for Monsanto Company and died of a heart attack on August 11, 1938 at his home in Evanston, Illinois. The younger Davis was survived by his wife, Mary (née Ryan) and seven year old son, Zachary Taylor Davis III.
Davis and Alma also had two other sons, David and Lawrence, and a daughter, Mary Louise, who married Charles Allison.
Read more about this topic: Zachary Taylor Davis
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