John McArthur Jr. (1823–1890) was a prominent
Americanarchitect based in
Philadelphia. Best remembered as the architect of the landmark
Philadelphia City Hall, McArthur also designed some of the city's most ambitious buildings of the Civil War era. Few of his buildings survive.
Career
John McArthur Jr. was born in Bladenock,
Scotland, on 13 May 1823,[1] and came to the
United States with his family when he was ten years old. Much of his mature style was characterized by
Italianate and
Second Empire forms and several of his best-known buildings feature
mansard roofs, which he helped to introduce and popularize in the United States. During the
American Civil War, McArthur planned 24 temporary war hospitals, including
Fort Delaware's 600-bed hospital on Pea Patch Island.[2]
Philadelphia has looked up to McArthur's architecture for more than a century. The 250-foot-tall tower-and-spire of his
Tenth Presbyterian Church (1854) was the tallest structure in the city when built. (Its 150-foot wooden spire was removed in 1912.) Later, this was surpassed by the tower of City Hall (1874–1901), whose 548 feet (167 meters) made it the tallest occupied building in the world when completed. Until the late 20th century, an unwritten agreement among Philadelphia architects kept all buildings shorter than the top of the statue of
William Penn atop McArthur's tower.[citation needed]
Personal life
A
Presbyterian and a member of Tenth Church, McArthur was married to Matilda Prevost; they had two sons and two daughters.
^Wodehouse, Lawrence (1969). "John McArthur, Jr. (1823-1890)". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 28 (4): 271–283.
doi:
10.2307/988539.
JSTOR988539.
^The Annual Report of the Library Company of Philadelphia, by Library Company of Philadelphia, page 52