User:JPRiley/sandbox/H. L. Stevens

H. L. Stevens & Company was an architecture, engineering and general contracting firm, established in 1909 and based for most of its existence in Chicago. The firm specialized in the design, engineering and construction of hotels and apartment buildings.

Harold Lyle Stevens was born on November 23, 1876 in Tomah, Wisconsin.

He attended the University of Wisconsin, and graduated in 1903 with a B. S. in Civil Engineering. That same year he was appointed Provincial Supervisor for public works of the province of Sorsogon, the Philippines, under Governor Luke E. Wright. There, he was responsible for the design and construction of many bridges. He returned home to Wisconsin in 1905, and established a practice as a consulting engineer in La Crosse. In 1908, he moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he incorporated the H. L. Stevens Company, contractors. This firm also maintained offices in Houston. In early 1909 Stevens left the firm, which became the American Construction Company of Houston. Stevens started a new firm, H. L. Stevens & Company, in Atlanta with fellow engineer Theodore P. Moorehead. By 1910 the firm had branch offices in Fort Worth, El Paso and Houston, Texas, and in that year opened a new office at Kansas City under the management of Walter S. Haldeman. Later that year an office, under the management of T. P. Moorehead, was added at Seattle. This was moved to Vancouver in 1911.

Later in the same year, the firm was re-incorporated in Illinois, and Stevens moved its main office to Chicago. There was a brief dispute over whether or not H. L. Stevens & Company, as a corporation and not an individual, could practice architecture. The State came to the decision that the firm was authorized to perform architectural services for buildings it would build itself, but not design buildings for others to build. In 1921 the firm added an East Coast headquarters, located in New York and under the direction of Charles A. Moore. This was followed in 1923 with a West Coast office at San Francisco, managed by Moorehead, which continued until 1930. A new Canadian office at Toronto was added in 1927.

From about 1910 to 1912, the chief architect of the firm was Rube S. Frodin, who left to begin his own practice in the latter year. He was replaced by supervising architect O. C. Gross, though Frodin was back with the Stevens organization by 1918. The architect Samuel Shackford Otis was a designer with the firm during 1924-1930 and 1940-1941.