WEBSTER, Daniel Thomas (1877-1939), active in Montreal, Que. as a partner in the successful firm of Barott, Blackader & Webster from 1912 to 1916. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y. on 26 April 1877, he was educated in New York City and at an early age of 17 years, he managed to land a job as an apprentice in one of the largest and most successful architectural offices in the United States. He joined McKim Mead & White in October 1894 and remained with that office until September 1912 (see staff list in Charles Moore, Life & Times of Charles Follen McKim, 1929, 332). One of his major projects there was to serve as Site Superintendent overseeing the construction of Pennsylvania Station, designed by McKim, Mead & White and built in 1905-1910.
While working in this office, Webster met another young architect, Ernest I. Barott (1884-1966), who had studied architecture at Syracuse University in 1902-05, but did not graduate. Instead, Barott took up a job offer from McKim Mead & White in September 1905, at first as student (in 1905-06), and later as a draftsman from 1908 until October 1911. When Barott moved to Montreal in 1912, he invited Webster and Gordon M. Blackader (1885-1916), another alumnus from McKim's office, to form a new partnership. Together they completed several major institutional and commercial projects in Quebec, British Columbia and New Brunswick (see list under Ernest Barott). Webster left Montreal in 1916 and returned to New York, but chose to pursue a career in the field of construction, becoming vice-president of Vermilyea-Brown Co. Ltd., a large contracting and building company with headquarters on 42nd Street in Manhattan. He died in White Plains, N.Y. on 23 September 1939 (obituary New York Times, 24 Sept. 1939, 44; obit. Daily News [New York], 25 Sept. 1939, 30; obit. Gazette [Montreal], 26 Sept. 1939, 9; biog. inf. in Susan Wagg, Ernest Isbell Barott Architect – An Introduction, 1985, 7-8, 31, an exhibition catalogue published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal).