Milton Bennett Medary

Who was Milton Bennett Medary?

Milton Bennett Medary, Jr. was an American architect from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, practicing with the firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary from 1910 until his death.

Medary attended the University of Pennsylvania for one year before joining the Philadelphia architecture firm of Frank Miles Day in 1891. While at the university, he designed, the 1894 student union, Houston Hall.

Medary remained with Frank Miles Day until 1894, when he opened his own firm in Philadelphia, Field & Medary; that firm would eventually become Zantinger, Borie & Medary in 1910. He was employed in 1904 to rehabilitate Solitude Farm in West Whiteland Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Zantzinger, Borie & Medary is known for the 1917 Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge National Historical Park, the 1927 Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company Building in Philadelphia, and the 1929 Bok Singing Tower in Lake Wales, Florida.

Medary was a design consultant to several universities, the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association, and Mount Vernon. His buildings include the Pennsylvania Athletic Club, Bryn Mawr Hospital, and, with Paul Cret, the Detroit Institute of Arts. Medary served as chairman of the Department of Labor's Housing Corporation during World War I and was selected in 1927 by Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon to serve on the Board of Architectural Consultants, which advised the department on the design of the Federal Triangle development. Medary served on the National Capital Park and Planning Commission and on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.; he was president of both the American Institute of Architects and its Philadelphia chapter, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and was affiliated with the Foundation for Architecture and Landscape Architecture and with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Medary was honored by the AIA with a gold medal in 1929 and by the Philadelphia Art Club with a gold medal in 1927, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Pennsylvania in 1927.