Pierre & Wright collection

COLLECTION NO.:

3-

SIZE:

ca. 2500 sheets of drawings
157 boards (18 cu. ft.)
1 document case (0.5 cu. ft.)
8 other boxes (5.5 cu. ft.)

COLLECTION DATES:

1920-ca. 1961

PROVENANCE:

RESTRICTIONS:

None

FINDING AIDS:

The collection has been cataloged and can be searched on the ARCAT database or in the card catalog.   An Inventory (PDF) is available.  Selected digital images are also available for viewing on a CD or in  PDF format.

The architectural firm of Pierre & Wright was created in 1925 by the collaboration of Edward D. Pierre and George Caleb Wright.  Early in its profession, the firm earned a reputation for designing period houses.  The commission which gave them this repute was for the Indianapolis News Ideal Homes Project, where they designed five houses in revival styles popular at the time: Colonial, English Tudor, Spanish, Italian, and French.  Many of their later commissions, however, were for commercial buildings, some of which were designed in the Art Deco style.  Of these public structures, the Indiana State Library and Historical Building and the Milo Stuart Memorial building at Arsenal Technical High School, are the firm's best-known works.  The firm dissolved in 1944.

Biographical Sketches

Edward D. Pierre
Edward D. Pierre was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1890.  In 1911, he entered Valparaiso University, but transferred one year later to the Armour Institute, now the Illinois Institute of Technology.  There he graduated in 1915 with an architecture degree, and began work in a firm in Detroit, Michigan.  Following service in the Army Engineering Corps from 1917 to 1919, Pierre moved to Indianapolis and had his own practice for six years before he partnered with Wright.  When the firm ended, he continued to practice independently under Edward D. Pierre and Associates until 1961.  Pierre died in 1971.

George Caleb Wright
George Caleb Wright was born in 1890 in Libertyville, Illinois.  He received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1912.  During the time between 1918 and 1923, Wright was a construction supervisor for the architecture firm Nimmins, Carr, and Wright, located in Chicago.  When he moved to Indianapolis, the partnership was formed between Pierre and himself.  Following the eighteen years life of the firm, Wright joined Vonnegut, Wright and Porteous - later known as Wright, Porteous and Lowe.  He died in 1973.

Scope and Content

The collection includes records of projects by architects Edward D. Pierre, the Pierre & Wright partnership (with George Caleb Wright), and the firm of Edward D. Pierre and Associates.  Some employees and associates of these firms whose work is represented are Leslie F. Ayres, Richard E. Bishop, Kenneth B. Curtiss, John W. Ittenbach, James O. Lewis, James M. Merrifield, J. Parke Randall, Schlegel, Robert M. Tate, J. Scott Williams, Orval E. Williamson, and Richard C. Zimmer.  The records date from 1920 to ca. 1961.  The Pierre & Wright partnership was formed in 1925 and dissolved in 1944.

Most of the records are preliminary design drawings, working drawings, and renderings.  Generally these are original tracings or presentation boards though in several cases only prints or photostat copies survive.  Over 100 photographs (negatives or prints), a model of "Indianapolis…..25 Years Hence" (1953), and models of 11 houses (ca. 1942) are included.  Also in the collection are a scrapbook (1926-1930), scrapbook material (1940's and '50's), reference material (plans and details collected from magazines and other sources), and a very few personal papers.  Neither specifications nor office records were available for acquisition. 

Cataloging of this collection was completed in 1988 with the aid of a Survey and Planning grant from the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, administered by the Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

RELATED HOLDINGS:

The Indiana Division of the Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, holds several boxes of records from the Pierre & Wright firm.  The boxes contain scrapbooks and miscellaneous manuscript material.