Arthur Rotch

Who was Arthur Rotch?

Arthur Rotch was an American architect active in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rotch was born in Milton, Massachusetts to Benjamin Smith Rotch and Annie Bigelow Lawrence. He studied humanities at Harvard College for four years, graduating in 1871, spent two years at MIT, then from 1874-1880 studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and in the atelier of Emile Vaudremer. While in France he was in charge of the restoration of the Château de Chenonceau.

In 1880 he became partner of Rotch & Tilden with George Thomas Tilden, designing churches, the Memorial Library in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, gymnasiums of Bowdoin College and Phillips Exeter Academy, various buildings of Milton Academy, the art schools and art museum of Wellesley College, and many private houses and business blocks throughout the United States. He married Lisette DeWolf Colt on November 16, 1892.

Rotch was chairman of the visiting committee of Fine Arts of Harvard University, a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and with his brother and sisters founded the Rotch Traveling Scholarship which sends an American student of architecture for a minimum of eight months study and travel abroad.