William Henry Miller

Who was William Henry Miller?

William Henry Miller was an American architect and the first student of the architecture school at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Born in 1848 in Trenton, New York, Miller graduated from Cornell in 1872. Four years later, he married Emma Halsey of Ithaca.

He was the foremost architect in Ithaca and for Cornell for many years, designing over seventy buildings on and off campus including 9 fraternity houses. Among his buildings for Cornell were the President's House, Barnes Hall, University Library, Boardman Hall, infirmaries, and Prudence Risley Hall. Among the fraternity houses were Deke House, Sigma Chi's chapter house, Chi Phi Lodge, and two former mansions: "Greystone Mansion," originally owned by silent movie actress Irene Castle, and the Jennie McGraw-Willard Fiske mansion, modeled on a French chateau, which became the Chi Psi fraternity house and burned down in 1906. In Ithaca, he also designed the Elizabeth Van Cleef and Robert Treman estates, the Jane McGraw mansion, the Edward G.