Ernest Flagg

(b Brooklyn, NY, 6 Feb 1857; d New York, 10 April 1947). American architect. He had no formal architectural education in the USA and spent his early career in partnership with his father and brother, engaged in land and building speculation in New York. This experience led Flagg's cousin, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, to provide financial support for his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1888-90). There he studied in the atelier of Paul Blondel and was joined by Walter B. Chambers (1866-1945), with whom he travelled and later formed a loosely structured partnership.

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(1857–1947)

American architect. He promoted French Beaux-Arts ideals in the USA, and is best known for the Singer Loft Building (1902–4), and the Singer Tower (1906–8—demolished), NYC. In those works he promoted the idea of structural rationality he had absorbed from his studies of Viollet-le-Duc. Among his other works may be cited the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1892–7), and the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD (1896–8) (in both of which his mastery of academic Classicism was displayed), and Bowcot (1916–18) and Wallcot (1918–22), two fine houses on Staten Island.

Bibliography

• Bacon (1986)
• Dictionary of American Biography (1974)
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

Flagg, Ernest, 1857–1947, American architect, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. The 45-story Singer Building in New York City, which he built in 1908, marked a revolutionary height. Flagg's other works include the Scribner Building, New York City, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and numerous residences. In magazine articles and in his book, Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Flagg advocated various structural economies and innovations. These include a method of house planning on a module basis and model tenement housing. He wrote also Le Naos du Parthenon (1928, in French and English), a study in Greek units of proportion.

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