MACHADO, Ernest Miguel Antonio (1868-1907), a talented and precocious American architect from Boston who completed works in the Ottawa area before his untimely death in 1907. Born in Manchester, Mass. on 30 June 1868, he was the son of Juan F. Machado of Cuba, one of the leading families on that Caribbean island. Ernest was educated in Salem, Mass. and graduated from the Massachusetts Inst. of Technology in 1890 after winning several prizes in design and drawing. Some of these works were exhibited in Paris at the World’s Fair in 1889. He trained in several offices in Boston, then joined the staff of Shepley, Ruttan & Coolidge (successors to the outstanding American architect H.H. Richardson). In that office, he was said to have “..designed, in whole or part….” a number of projects including buildings at Stanford University in California (1892), the North Union Station in Boston (1893), the main branch of the Chicago Public Library (1893), Perkins Hall at Harvard Univ. (1895), and planning and design of the famous Art Institute of Chicago (built 1897). While working in that office, he met another young architect Arthur LeBaron Weeks, with whom he was to later form a partnership.
With these impeccable architectural credentials, he launched his own office in Salem in 1898, and opened a branch office in Boston. When his older brother Joseph was appointed as general manager of the American Bank Note Co. in Ottawa, Ont., it provided Ernest with an entrée into the social and architectural scene in Ottawa and in Canada, and he made several visits to the region from 1903 until 1907. He was commissioned to design the substantial English Tudor Revival plan for the Ottawa Golf Club (1903), and in April 1907 he formed a partnership in Ottawa with Arthur LeB. Weeks. Together, they planned the new Rosamond Memorial Hospital at Almonte, Ont. and undoubtedly would have received many more commissions had it not been for the unexpected death of Machado while on a family vacation in late 1907. Machado drowned in a canoe accident on Ossipee Lake in New Hampshire on 22 September 1907, and he was later buried at Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem where he had designed an impressive Gothic Revival cemetery chapel in 1904-05 (obituary Boston Evening Transcript, 23 Sept. 1907, 1; obit. Ottawa Citizen, 23 Sept. 1907, 9; American Architect & Building News [New York], xcii, 5 Oct. 1907, 105; obit. and port. C.A.B., xxi, Nov. 1907, 23)
E.A. MACHADO
HULL, QUE., large club house building for the Ottawa Golf Club, Aylmer Road, "....about 3 miles from the city", 1903 (C.R., xiv, 6 May 1903, 4; Evening Journal [Ottawa], 30 May 1903, 9, illus. & descrip.; Montreal Daily Star, 4 June 1903, 2, descrip.)
NORTH ANDOVER, MASS., residence for Richard S. Russell, 1904 (American Architect & Building News [Boston], lxxxvii, Feb. 1905, 52, with illus. plate)
IPSWICH, MASS., residence for James H. Proctor, 1904 (American Architect & Building News [Boston], lxxxvii, Feb. 1905, 52, with illus. plate)
NAVESINK HIGHLANDS, NEW JERSEY, “Crow’s Nest”, a residence for Dr. J.H. Huddleston, 1905 (American Homes & Gardens [New York], i, Aug. 1905, 99-101, illus.)
MAGNOLIA, MASS., “Windermere”, a residence for W.O. Underwood, 1905 (American Homes & Gardens [New York], i, Dec. 1905, 388-90, illus.)
SALEM, MASS., Blake Memorial Chapel at Harmony Grove Cemetery, 1905 (American Architectural Review [Boston], xii, Oct. 1905, 200-01, illus.)
MACHADO & WEEKS
ALMONTE, ONT., Rosamond Memorial Hospital, 1907-08 (C.R., xviii, 12 June 1907, 6, t.c.)