Harvey Ellis papers

Harvey Ellis (1852-1904) architect, artist and craftsman, was one of the foremost architectural renderers of his time and a key figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Harvey Ellis was born in Rochester, New York, on October 17, 1852, the oldest of Dewitt and Eliza Haseltine Ellis' four children. Despite the boy's evident artistic nature and talent, Ellis' father arranged for him to enter the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on July 1, 1871. His stay at the school was brief: he was among 15 cadets discharged less than seven months later for academic insufficiency.

There is little documentation of the next six years of Ellis' life. What few facts have been uncovered indicate that he spent some time in New York and Albany before returning to Rochester in early September 1877. He was a founder of the Rochester Art Club on September 5, 1877, and quickly gained recognition as a painter. In early 1879, he and his brother Charles established the architectural office of H. & C.S. Ellis. The firm was quite successful from the start, producing designs for many commercial and residential buildings in and around Rochester.

Details of Ellis' location and activities are once again scant for most of 1885-86. He is known to have been in Rochester early in 1885 and to have married there, while he submitted a competition entry for a statue of Ulysses Grant from Utica, New York, in the fall. From 1886-1893, Ellis worked for a number of architectural firms throughout the Midwest. These included: Charles Mould and then J. Walter Stevens in St. Paul, Minnesota; Leroy Buffington and Orff & Orff in Minneapolis; Eckel and Mann in St. Joseph, Missouri; and George Mann and Randall, Ellis and Baker in St. Louis. Ellis returned to Rochester in 1893 and rejoined architectural practice with his brother but was deeply immersed in his painting and in the aesthetic principals of the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1897, Ellis, Claude Bragdon, and M. Louise Stowell were founding members of the Rochester Arts and Crafts Society, one of the earliest such organizations in the country. The Society's first exhibition, of Japanese prints and French posters, was held at Rochester's Cutler Building in May 1897.

Following the 1903 installation of an Arts and Crafts exhibition at Rochester's Mechanics Institute, Harvey Ellis relocated to Syracuse, New York, where he began writing--and illustrating--for Gustav Stickley's The Craftsman on Arts and Crafts architecture and interiors. Some of the renderings which accompanied these articles influenced the furniture produced by Stickley. Harvey Ellis died on January 2, 1904, at the age of 52. He was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Agnes cemetery in Syracuse. A marker was placed on the grave in 1997 by the Arts and Crafts Society of Central New York.