R. Bruce Downey, architect, was born in Kingston in 1952. He received a B.Arch. from Carlton University in 1976 and became a member of the Ontario Association of Architects in 1981. Between 1976 and 1978, Mr, Downey was employed by Wilfred Sorensen, Architect, Kingston. He was employed by Lily Inglis from 1979 to 1981 when he established the firm of R. Bruce Downey Architect. In 1983, he rejoined Mrs. Inglis to establish the firm of Inglis and Downey Architects.
Henry Janeway Hardenbergh was an American architect, best known for his hotels and apartment buildings. Hardenbergh was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, of a Dutch family, and attended the Hasbrouck Institute in Jersey City. He apprenticed in New York from 1865 to 1870 under Detlef Lienau, and, in 1870, opened his own practice there.
He obtained his first contracts for three buildings at Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey—the expansion of Alexander Johnston Hall (1871), designing and building Geology Hall (1872) and the Kirkpatrick Chapel (1873)—through family connections. Hardenbergh's great-great grandfather, the Reverend Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, had been the first president of Rutgers College from 1785 to 1790, when it was still called "Queen's College".
He then got the contract to design the "Vancorlear" on West 55th Street, the first apartment hotel in New York City, in 1879. The following year he was commissioned by Edward S. Clark, then head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, to build a housing development. As part of this work, he designed the pioneering Dakota Apartments in Central Park West, novel in its location, very far north of the centre of the city.
Subsequently, Hardenbergh received commissions to build the Waldorf (1893) and the adjoining Astoria (1897) hotels for William Waldorf Astor and Mrs. Astor, respectively. The two competing hotels were later joined together as the Waldorf-Astoria, which was demolished in 1929 for the construction of the Empire State Building.
Hardenbergh lived for some time in Bernardsville, New Jersey and died at his home in Manhattan, New York City on March 13, 1918. He is buried in Woodland Cemetery, in Stamford, Connecticut.
Lily Inglis, was born in Milan, Italy in 1926. She received a Diploma in Architecture from the School of Architecture, Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1952 and became an Associate Royal Institute of British Architects that same year. In 1957 she received a Certificate in Landscape Design, University College, London University, England. Between 1962 and 1963 she did a practical training period with Kingston architect, Wilfred Sorensen before being admitted as a member of the Ontario Association of Architects in 1963.She had her own practice in Kingston between 1963 and 1965 and had an interior architectural practice in Philadelphia, P.A., U.S.A. from 1965 to 1968. Between 1968 and 1983 she was the sole principal of Lily Inglis Architect working mainly in Downtown Kingston with heritage buildings. Inglis died in 2010.
A.A. Leyare was an American architect based in Alexandria Bay, New York.
John Walter Wood was an American architect and specialist in airport design from 1931, and partner in the New York City firm of Poor & Wood, Airport Contractors Ltd. Born in Short Hills, N.J. on 5 June 1900, he possessed formidable educational credentials, graduating from Harvard Univ. in 1922, attending Oxford Univ. in 1923, and becoming a finalist for the Rome Prize in Architecture in 1926. He also studied at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris in 1928. In Canada he can be credited with the design of a significant modernist residence located on Niagara Island, Ontario, in the Thousand Islands district of the St. Lawrence River. Designed in 1930 for Sherman Pratt, this striking landmark was one of the first reinforced concrete houses built in Ontario (Architecture [New York], lxv, Feb. 1932, 63-9, illus.; Arts & Decoration [New York], xxxix, Oct. 1933, 16-18, illus. & descrip.; Pierre du Prey, Ah Wilderness! Resort Architecture in the Thousand Islands, 2004, 106-10, illus.). Three years later Wood was again commissioned by Pratt to add another structure, a ferro-concrete boathouse located on the south side of the island (Architectural Record, [New York], lxix, Jan. 1936, 37-42, illus. & descrip.). A tennis shelter for the complex was built at the same time (Architectural Record [New York], lxix, March 1936, 198, illus.). In the United States, Wood designed the outdoor aquarium at Marine Studios (now Marineland) in St. Augustine, Florida, 1937-38, and a technical school for the American Air Force in Denver. He was an acknowledged authority on airport design, and author of Airports - Some Elements of Design & Future Development (1940), and Airports and Air Traffic (1948). He later taught at the Department of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana, and died there on 24 November 1958 (obit. New York Times, 27 Nov. 1958, 29; biog. Who Was Who in America, iii, 1951-1960, 936)