PERRINE, Ren Brown (1873-1938) [his full name was Lorenzo Brown Perrine], partner in the successful firm of Prack & Perrine, Architects & Engineers, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Perrine was born in Minnesota on 3 January 1873 and was educated and trained as a structural engineer, not as an architect. He lived and worked in Cleveland, Ohio where he was Chief Engineer with the Van Dorn Iron Works in Cleveland, Ohio, and he was said to have possessed "....extensive experience in all phases of reinforced concrete and structural steel design". In 1911 he was invited by Bernard H. Prack, an architect and engineer, to form a new partnership (see list of works under Prack & Perrine).
They opened a branch office in Hamilton, Ont., and succeeded in completing major commissions for industrial buildings in Toronto and Hamilton including the Russell Motor Car Assembly Plant in Toronto (1912), the Wrigley Gum Co. Ltd. Factory in Toronto (Phase One, 1914-15; Phase Two, 1916-17), as well as the sprawling manufacturing complex for Canadian Westinghouse Ltd. in Hamilton (1913, with additions 1917 and 1927). Perrine left the firm in 1917 and continued his own career in Cleveland as a structural engineer, and later died in East Cleveland, Ohio on 27 September 1938. He was buried at Highland Park Cemetery in that city. A biography and photographic portrait of Perrine can be found in the Engineering & Contract Record [Toronto], xxvii, 1 Jan. 1913, 61.