Cutter, Manly N.

CUTTER, Manly N. (1851- 1931), born in Massachusetts c. 1851 and active in New York City, and later in Montclair, New Jersey. He was the architect of the picturesque Gothic design for St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, Broadway, MEDICINE HAT, ALTA., 1913-14; with interiors completed later in 1932 (C.R., xxvii, 23 July 1913, 72; Medicine Hat News, 21 June 1913; 19 March 1914; M.B.V. Byrne, From Buffalo to the Cross - History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary, 1973, 285-6, illus.; Barry Magrill, "Pouring Ecclesiastical Tradition into A Modern Mould: Reinforced Concrete Churches in Canada" in Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, xxxvii, Spring 2012, 3-15, illus. ). Reputed to the first church in Canada constructed of reinforced concrete, it was inspired by the design of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral in New York City. Cutter, who was active in New York from 1880, is best known as the staff architect for the New York Building Plan Company from 1886 to 1892 and the author of their pattern book entitled 'The New York Building Plan Co. Illustrated Catalogue of Examples of Buildings', 1887 (H.R. Hitchcock, American Architectural Books, 1962, Item 308). Many of his residential designs, presented in the Shingle Style, were published in the Inland Architect [Chicago] in 1893 and 1894.

After 1905 Cutter appears to have left New York; in 1910 he was recorded as a draftsman in Spokane, Washington, working for the well-known firm of Preusse & Zittel, Architects (R.L. Polk, Spokane City Directory, 1910, 356). From there he moved across the border to southern Alberta in May 1912 to work on his ecclesiastical commission in Medicine Hat. He left Canada in 1914; by 1917 he was living and working as a draftsman for J.L. Montgomery, Architect in Charleston, West Virginia (R.L. Polk, City of Charleston Directory, 1917, 174). Cutter later moved back to the New York region, and died at the age of nearly 80 years, at Hawthorne, N.Y. (near Tarrytown) on 4 April 1931 (death notice New York Times, 6 April 1931, 21; obituary and port. Pencil Points [New York], xii, May 1931, 379, 392; inf. D.S. Francis, Architects in Practise New York City 1840-1900, 1979, 24).