BEEBE, Milton Earl (1840-1923) of Buffalo, N.Y. was responsible for three important ecclesiastical commissions in southern Ontario. Born in Cassadaga, N.Y. on 27 November 1840, he worked as a carpenter and joiners apprentice from the age of 16, and served with the N.Y. Cavalry in the American Civil War from 1861 until 1863. He moved to Buffalo in 1865 and worked as assistant to Cyrus K. Porter for one year, then went to Chicago in 1866 to join the office of Gordon P. Randall for two years. He later worked in architectural offices in New York City, Boston, and in Worcester, Mass., and it was there that presumably he became familiar with some of the innovative early work of H.H. Richardson, who had completed several commissions in New England and who had just won the competition for Trinity Church, Boston in 1872. Beebe established his own office in Buffalo in 1873 and quickly became a leading architect there. In 1877 he designed St. Thomas Episcopal Church in St. Catharines, Ont., a commission won in a competition over 16 other architects. His winning design was a robust and sumptuous Romanesque Revival work completed in 1879 and based on a square plan configuration rather than the more conventional elongated or cruciform layout . His other Canadian works are more modest and reserved designs for the Methodist Church, Welland, Ont. (1882) which again employs a square plan with a distinctive bell tower, (the upper portion of which burned in 1930) and St. Paul's Anglican Church in Fort Erie, Ont. (1878). Some of Beebe's important works in Buffalo include the Greene Block, Washington Street; the Post Office Block, Seneca Street; the Austin Exchange Building, Main Street; and the German Evangelical and German Methodist Churches. He also designed the Methodist Episcopal churches in Tonawanda, in Lancaster, and in Aurora, N.Y.
In 1899 Beebe left Buffalo and moved west to North Dakota and settled at Fargo where he maintained an office until 1910. There, he designed several buildings in both Fargo and in Moorhead, Minnesota, including Old Main at Concordia College, the Moorhead Carnegie Library, and the South Engineering Building at North Dakota State University. Beebe was also responsible for planning the North Wing for the State Capitol, Bismark, North Dakota (1903; burned 1929). He died in San Diego, Calif. on 4 February 1923 (death notice in San Diego Union, 7 Feb. 1923, 8; biography in National Cyclopedia of American Biography, iii, 395; inf. Barbara Soper, Buffalo & Erie Co. Public Library; Ronald L.M. Ramsay, Fargo, North Dakota).
ST. CATHARINES, ONT., St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Ontario Street, 1877-78; still standing in 2023 (Commercial Advertiser [Buffalo], 9 May 1877, 3, descrip.; American Architect and Building News, v, 26 April 1879, illus.; P. Moore, St. Thomas Saints - Centennial History of St. Thomas Church, 1976, 8-13, illus.; Candace Iron, 'Milton Earl Beebe's St. Thomas Anglican Church, St. Catharines, Ontario', in Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, xxxi, No. 2, 2006, 11-22, illus.)
FORT ERIE, ONT., St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Niagara Boulevard, 1878-81; burned 1892 and later rebuilt to the original design (Commercial Advertiser [Buffalo], 11 July 1881, 3, descrip.; American Architect & Building News, iv, 14 Sept. 1878, vii)
WELLAND, ONT., Methodist Church, King Street, 1882; tower damaged by fire in 1930 (Welland Tribune, 15 Dec. 1882, l, descrip.)
FORT ERIE, ONT., residence for Mr. Hersey of Buffalo, 1889 (Architectural Era (Syracuse), iii, March 1889, 74)