DYER, J. MILTON (22 April 1870-27 May 1957), a prominent architect who designed Cleveland's CLEVELAND CITY HALL (1916) on Lakeside Avenue, was born in Middletown, Pennsylvania, to Cyrus and Eliza Dyer. He moved with his family to Cleveland in 1881. He graduated from CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, attended a local training school for machinists, and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Technology and L'ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris (1900). After returning to Cleveland from Europe, Dyer had an active practice in the first two decades of the 1900s. Some of his major commissions were the Brooklyn Savings & Loan Association (1904) at West 25th Street and Archwood Avenue; the TAVERN CLUB (1905) at East 36th and Prospect Avenue; the First Methodist Church (1905) at Euclid Avenue and East 30th Street; the PEERLESS MOTOR CAR COMPANY (1906) at East 93rd Street and Quincy Avenue (now demolished); the CLEVELAND ATHLETIC CLUB (1911); and City Hall (1916). After a period of inactivity, Dyer designed the U.S. Coast Guard station (1940) on WHISKEY ISLAND at the mouth of the CUYAHOGA RIVER. Early residences designed by Dyer include one for Edmund Burke (1910) on Magnolia Drive in UNIVERSITY CIRCLE (now used by the CLEVELAND MUSIC SCHOOL SETTLEMENT), the Lyman Treadway house (1911) at East 89th Street and Euclid Avenue, and the Francis Line home at 1574 East 108.
Unmarried, Dyer died in Cleveland and was buried in WOODLAND CEMETERY.