KNOX & ELLIOT

KNOX & ELLIOT was an architectural firm active in Cleveland from 1893-1925. Wilm Knox (1858-1915) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and came to America in 1886. In the office of Burnham & Root in Chicago, he met John H. Elliot (ca. 1862-ca. 1925), a native of Toronto. They formed a partnership in 1888 and opened an office in Toronto, where they executed several large and important commissions. In 1892 they were invited to work with Henry Ives Cobb on the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and Knox became Cobb's office manager. Knox & Elliot set up practice in Cleveland in 1893. After Knox's death in 1915, the firm continued under Elliot until 1925. Its work here consisted predominantly of commercial and industrial buildings, apartments, and some churches and private residences. Among the buildings still extant in the 1990s were the ROCKEFELLER BLDG., generally considered to be their local masterpiece; the Standard Bldg.; the Carnegie Library on Lorain at W. 83rd St.; ST. JAMES AME CHURCH; the McKinley Terrace; and the Pelton Apts. One of their greatest buildings was the HIPPODROME THEATER, the largest remaining vaudeville theater in the nation at the time it was demolished in 1981. Another of their creations, the Engineers Bldg., was razed shortly afterwards to make room for the Marriott Hotel of SOCIETY CENTER.


Schofield, Mary-Peale. "Working File of Cleveland Architects. . . ." WRHS.


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