John Stewardson

Born in Philadelphia in 1858, Stewardson attended Harvard University in 1877 before transferring to study under the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1879-1882. He returned to the United States after graduation, working in the offices of Theophilus Parsons Chandler, Jr., and Frank Furness. While at Theophilus Parsons Chandler, he reunited with childhood friend and fellow architect Walter Cope, who would soon become his business partner. The two established Cope & Stewardson in 1885 and soon gained prominence as one of Philadelphia’s leading architecture firms dedicated to the design and construction of collegiate campuses.  

Stewardson designed over thirty college buildings in less than a decade as a partner in Cope & Stewardson, with some of his most notable examples being Pembroke East and West at Bryn Mawr College, Brookings Hall at Washington University in St. Louis, the Quadrangle Dormitories at the University of Pennsylvania, and Blair Hall at Princeton University, amongst several other buildings on these universities’ campuses. Stewardson was well recognized as one of the leading architects developing the Collegiate Gothic style, characterized by masonry construction, ornate details, and rectangular plans. Non-collegiate works include the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind (now Overbrook School for the Blind), the Ivy Club of Princeton, the City Hall of Atlantic City (demolished in 1969), the Municipal Building for Washington, D.C. (now John A. Wilson District Building), the Harrison Building in Philadelphia, and several other public and private projects. He collaborated closely with landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and John Charles Olmsted of the Olmsted firm on campus planning initiatives at Bryn Mawr College and at Washington University in St. Louis, where his firm aided with the master planning of the campus’ block plan. Stewardson was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a member of the University of Pennsylvania architecture faculty from 1892 until his untimely death while skating on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia in 1896.