Electus D. Litchfield
Electus Darwin Litchfield, FAIA was an American architect and town planner, practicing in New York City. His firm, Electus D. Litchfield, established in 1926, practiced at 80 Fifth Avenue until he disestablished it in 1950.
Career
Born in New York City on April 25, 1872, Litchfield graduated from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1889 and Stevens Institute of Technology in 1892. He married Elizabeth B. Rodman on October 6, 1906, and they had two children.He worked at various firms in New York, including Carrère & Hastings and Lord & Hewlett, before establishing his own in 1926, designing a number of commercial buildings.
"He was a devotee of municipal beautification." He was one of the main architects and town planners of Yorkship Village, a World War I industrial town of 2,000 homes near the shipyard in Camden, New Jersey. "He was also an architect for the Red Hook slum clearance and housing project, assisted in reconstruction of Bellevue Hospital, and designed the Brooklyn Masonic Temple."
Outside of New York, Litchfield designed "many public and commercial buildings and monuments, including the public library in St. Paul; the National Armory in Washington, and a monument to the Lewis and Clark expedition at Astoria, Ore." He disestablished his firm in 1950.
He designed the Franklin Pierce Tate House at Morganton, North Carolina.
Organization membership
In the 1930s, as president of the Municipal Art Society, he fought a proposal to renovate Central Park with numerous baseball fields.He was a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, member of the Architectural League of New York, New York Fine Arts Federation, the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, and Building Revision Commission, a former director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a founder of the New York Building Congress, and a "former governor of the Society of Colonial Wars of New York, and a member of the General Society of Colonial Wars, the City Club of New York and The Pilgrims."