User:Teemu08/sandbox

Biography
Henry Ives Cobb was born on August 19, 1859 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, Albert Adams Cobb, was abandoned by his mother after she left to become the fifth wife of Brigham Young. Henry Ives Cobb's mother was the daughter of an officer that served on the USS Constitution during the War of 1812. Cobb's uncle was Congressman John W. Candler. Candler managed an importing business with Cobb's father. As a child, Henry Ives Cobb made toys and model buildings. While attending Brookline High School, a teacher fell ill and asked Cobb to take over his drawing class. Cobb went on to study civil engineering at the Harvard University Lawrence Scientific School. He also studied mechanical engineering and architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the time, one of the few architecture schools in the country. Cobb did an independent study of architecture in Europe upon graduating.

After his return in 1881, Cobb joined the firm of Peabody & Stearns. During his first year with the firm, Cobb entered a contest to design the new clubhouse for the Union Club of Chicago. He moved to Chicago that September, where his older brother Albert had moved three years earlier. Cobb was able to convince Peabody & Stearns draftsman Charles Sumner Frost to join him in Chicago to form a new practice. Albert probably alerted Henry to the contest, as he was the club treasurer. The Union Club sought to out-do with Calumet Club, who had just erected a well-received design by Burnham & Root. The Union Club contest was anonymous, and by December, Cobb's design had became the most popular with club members. Cobb was only twenty-two years old when he won the contest. Cobb's design was an interpretation of the Richardsonian Romanesque motif, although Cobb's focus was on the vertical element instead of the horizontal. American Architect and Building News, one of the leading architecture journals at the time, published interior photographs of the building.

Only three months after his Chicago arrival, Cobb was commissioned to design one of the most sought-out commissions in Chicago. Real estate mogul Potter Palmer and his wife Bertha chose Cobb & Frost to design their estate on Lake Shore Drive.

Cobb joined the Western Association of Architects soon after it formed in 1884.