Collections

• Lyda Collection, UNCA
• Related Oral Interviews, UNCA
• E.M. Ball Photo Collection, UNCA
• Correspondence, AAM
• Watercolors, Drawings and Blueprints, AAM, ABLS

Biographical Information

Frank Pierce Milburn (December 12, 1868-September 21, 1926), was born in Bowling Green Kentucky. He learned much of his latter architecture trade from working with his father from a young age. Milburn's father was a builder/architect in the school Milburn called practical architecture since in rural America at the time construction and design were usually carried out by the same person. Aside from this early education Milburn received his formal architecture training at Arkansas Industrial University in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Milburns long and energetic career began by working with his father erecting courthouses in Kentucky during the 1890's. From here he started his own practice in West Virginia. He continued to work in court house construction and design and this would become a professional specialty of his for much of his life.

An important steep in Milburn career came when he won a design competition for a new courthouse in Forsyth County, North Carolina, to better supervise this project he moved to Winston in 1893. The impressive courthouse he designed was his largest and most ambitious to date and helped to establish his reputation and professional connection with the Carolina piedmont and western mountains. Prosperity in the textile industry created a strong demand for construction the Milburn capitalized on. He secured numerous commissions in Charlotte, Columbia, and elsewhere in the region. In 1900 Milburn relocated himself and his small design firm to Washington D.C. In the nations capitol he began an interest in designing railway stations that would grow into another profitable architectural specialty. He would design numerous such terminals for the Southern Railway Company across the southeast region and would eventually be named Southern Railway's official architect in 1902. In North Carolina he designed railroad stations in Wilson and Greenville both in 1902.

In the first decade of the 20th century Milburn had the most prominent architectural firm in the Southern United States, he was the first American architect to work in all major Southern states. His early accomplishment of this excellent reputation along with the quality and sheer volume of his work is extremely impressive. While professionally Milburn specialized in courthouses, train stations, and later steel frame office buildings he is virtually unique in the South of this period in his resistance to total specialization. Despite having a focus on certain building types Milburn took a wide variety of building commissions in numerous states that far exceeded the portfolio's of any of this contemporaries. This quality of his work allowed his firm to remain prosperous at a time when many other architects were struggling and dangerously tied to their sub-regions economic ups and down. An ingenious idea that contributed to his success was streamlining and standardizing designs of courthouses. These were essentially the same layout tailored to his current clients taste and financial resources this saved him from wasting time and effort on repetitive drafting. For example Milburn had a standard courthouse plan for a budget of between15, 000 to 21,000 dollars.

http://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/people/P000085

Related Oral Interviews

The Buildings

Inventory of Architecture

Selected Correspondence

Typological Motifs in Frank Milburn's Work

Bibliography

Charlotte Vestal Brown Papers, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Mary Kratt and Mary Manning Boyer, Remembering Charlotte: Postcards from a New South City, 1905-1950 (2000).

Frank Pierce Milburn, Designs from the Work of Frank P. Milburn, Architect, Columbia, S.C. (1903).

Frank Pierce Milburn, Designs from the Work of Frank P. Milburn, Architect, Columbia, S.C. (1905).

Daniel J. Vivian, "'A Practical Architect': Frank P. Milburn and the Transformation of Architectural Practice in the New South, 1890-1925," Winterthur Portfolio (Spring, 2005)

Lawrence Wodehouse, "Frank Pierce Milburn (1868-1926), A Major Southern Architect," North Carolina Historical Review (July, 1973)

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