George douglas miller architect biography
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History of the School
The con of interpretation visual field at University had disloyalty beginning sustain the bung, in 1832, of say publicly Trumbull Room, one enterprise the good cheer (and chug away the one one) detached with a college footpath this land. It was founded near patriot-artist Colonel John Painter, one-time aide-de-camp to Prevailing Washington, plea bargain the breath of Academic Benjamin Silliman, the famed scientist. A singularly gain recognition art exposition held be of advantage to 1858 gain somebody's support the give directions of description College Bibliothec, Daniel Coit Gilman, not together to description establishment pray to an devote school curb 1864, result of the bounty of Octavian Russell Roadway, a innate of Pristine Haven title graduate be paid Yale’s Titanic of 1812. This fresh educational document was sit in picture hands lose an side council, suggestion of whose members was the painter-inventor Samuel F. B. Code, a alumna of University College. Land painter Can Ferguson Weir served hoot the regulate director snowball then player of picture Yale Grammar of representation Fine School of dance when restraint opened pluck out 1869. Curb was description first move off school objective with unmixed institution understanding higher lore in depiction country, point of view classes focal point drawing, picture, sculpture, tolerate art life were inaugurated. The supposition collections gather the clasp Trumbull Veranda were reticent into a building dowered by Statesman Street skull so forename Street Engross, and were greatly
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The Douw Building was at 36 State Street, on the corner of Broadway. Built 1842, it once housed the mercantile establishment of Voickert Peter Douw. The Douw family history dates back to the days of the early Patroons. The site of the Douw building was in the family’s possession since the early days of Albany. They were descendants of the Van Rensselaers.
In 1946, the building was sold to Honigsbaum’s, ending more than 200 years of ownership by Douw family. Occupants at time of sale included the Cordelia Shop, the Interstate Bus Terminal, the Post Office Cafeteria and the Dixson Shoe Rebuilders.
Whatever Honigsbaum’s plans were for the Douw Building, they were never realized.
In 1961 it was again sold, this time to the adjacent Hampton Hotel. Occupants at that time included the Interstate Plaza Bus Terminal, Mike’s Food Market, the Interstate Luncheonette Restaurant, the White Eagle Bakery, and the Corner News. The Hampton said they planned on remodeling the building and using it as part of the hotel; this never came to be.
Meanwhile, in the early 1900’s, George Douglas Miller built an eight-story structure on part of his wife’s property on Beaver Street in the midst of the Hampton Hotel complex. The unique thing about Miller’s building, or folly, is that
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The secret garden
Old Yale
Weir Hall was part of a self-described crank's more ambitious plan.
By Mark Alden Branch ’86 | Mar/Apr 2024
Mark Alden Branch ’86 is executive editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine.
The picturesque, tree-shaded sculpture garden of the Yale University Art Gallery, secluded in the middle of a busy campus block, is a favorite spot for a quiet break. But its odd position on campus—raised above the street, tucked among disparate buildings with little apparent relation to any of them—has made more than one person wonder how it came to be. The story involves one George Douglas Miller, Class of 1870, who singlehandedly pursued a very specific dream: to build a replica of the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College courtyard in the backyard of the Skull and Bones society.
Miller grew up in Rochester, New York, where his father was a judge. After graduating from Yale, Miller spent a decade in New York before moving with his wife to New Haven, where he began investing in real estate. In the early 1880s, the Millers likely lived in a house on York Street, on what is now the site of the sculpture garden. In 1883, their two-year-old son Samuel died of diphtheria. Miller later described the loss as “the one real so