Whidden, William Marcy

WHIDDEN, William Marcy (1857-1929) and his partner Ion Lewis (1858-1933) maintained a busy practice in Portland, Oregon and from there prepared the plans for the Edison Block, Pender Street at Seymour Street, VANCOUVER, B.C. in 1892 (Vancouver Daily World, 11 May 1892, 5, descrip.). This four storey commercial block was built by the Edison Electric Manufacturing Co. to accommodate the rapidly growing demand for electrification of the boomtown of Vancouver.
Whidden was born in Boston, Mass. on 10 February 1857 and educated at the Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, then spent four years in Paris studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1882 he joined McKim, Mead & White in New York and in 1884 moved to Boston where he formed a partnership with William E. Chamberlin. The firm of Chamberlin & Whidden were one of thirteen competitors to submit designs for the new Court House & City Hall at TORONTO, ONT. Their scheme was presented in the Romanesque Revival style (American Architect & Building News [Boston], xix, 6 Feb. 1886, plate illus.), but it did not place among the finalists and E.J. Lennox was declared winner. In 1888 Whidden moved to Portland, Oregon and the following year formed a new partnership with a former MIT classmate Ion Lewis. Their major commissions there included the Portland City Hall (1892-95) and the Multnomah County Courthouse (1909). Whidden remained active in Portland until his death there on 27 July 1929 (obit. The Oregonian [Portland], 28 July 1929; biog. H. Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects, 1956, 649-50; biog. of Whidden & Lewis, MacMillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 1982, iv, 389-90).