Buttrick White & Burtis

Buttrick White & Burtis (also known as BWB) was an architecture firm based in New York City, established in 1981 by the architects Harold Buttrick, Samuel G. White, and Theodore A. Burtis III, remaining active until 2002. Harold Buttrick left the firm in 1998 to form Murphy Burnham & Buttrick Architects. The architect Jean P. Phifer was a partner of the firm until 1996, after which she served as President of the Art Commission of the City of New York from 1998–2003. The architect Michael Dwyer was associated with the firm from 1981–1996. In 2002, Buttrick White & Burtis merged with Platt Byard Dovell to become Platt Byard Dovell White.^[1]

Architectural practice[edit]

Buttrick White & Burtis's work was eclectic. Writing in 1985 in New York Magazine, Carter Wiseman contrasted the firm's conservative renovation work at the traditional, oak paneled Harvard Club of New York with their more avant-garde designs for the stores of the then-hip Tower Records chain, adding that the chain's downtown venue was "the most successful such enterprise in America."^[2] BWB was also known for artful renovations and additions to architectural landmarks, such as those at the Grand Army Plaza in Manhattan, restored in 1990; at Casa Italiana, Columbia University, completed in 1996; and at the Brooklyn College library, completed in 2002.

BWB's largest project, a fifteen-story, postmodern building in Manhattan, built for the Saint Thomas Choir School, was completed in 1987,^[3] and dedicated in January 1988 by the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury. The firm occasionally designed in a more traditional idiom; in a 1995 survey by The New York Times of the then-emerging New Classical school of architecture, the reporter Patricia Leigh Brown noted that, "Michael Dwyer...an architect at Buttrick White & Burtis...has recently completed a classical-style yacht and an $8.95 million town house on the Upper East Side and is renovating Rudolph Nureyev's former apartment in the Dakota."^[4]

The architects associated with Buttrick White & Burtis were prolific authors, most notably Samuel G. White, a great-grandson of the architect Stanford White, who between 1998 and 2008 co-authored a trilogy of the work of Stanford White's firm, McKim, Mead & White.^[5] In 2015, the trilogy's authors were given an Arthur Ross Award by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art.

Principal Architectural Works[edit]

• Ships Chandlery, 170 John Street, New York City (restoration & addition, completed 1982).^[6]
• Tower Records, Broadway at 4th St., New York City (completed 1983).^[7]
• Tower Records, Broadway at West 66th St., New York City (completed 1984).^[8]
• Tower Records, Washington DC (completed 1985).^[9]
• Tower Records, Torrance, CA (completed 1986).^[10]
• Tower Records, Piccadilly Circus, London, UK (completed 1986).^[11]
• Saint Thomas Choir School, 202 West 58th St., New York City (completed 1987).^[12]
• Grand Army Plaza (Manhattan) (restoration completed 1990).^[13][14]
• Ballplayers House, Central Park, New York City (completed 1990).
• Annex Building, Chapin School, New York City (completed 1990).^[15]
• Classical Townhouse, 14 East 81st Street, New York City (completed 1991).^[16][17]
• Dana Discovery Center, Central Park, New York City (completed 1993).^[18][19]
• William Sidney Mount House, Stony Brook, NY (restored 1993).^[20]
• Bonnie Dune, Residence, Southampton, NY (restored 1993)—with Jed Johnson Associates.^[21][22]
• Casa Italiana, Columbia University, New York City (restoration & new east facade, completed 1996)—with Italo Rota, associate architect.^[23]
• Siegel Student Center, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY (restoration & addition, completed 1998).^[24]
• Middle School Building, Trinity School, New York City (completed 1998).^[25]
• Library, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY (restoration & addition, completed 2002)—with Shepley Bulfinch, associate architect.^[26]

Gallery[edit]

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  Ships Chandlery, 170 John Street, New York City, addition completed in 1982.

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  Detail, Saint Thomas Choir School, New York City, completed in 1987.

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  Ballplayers House, Central Park, New York City, completed in 1990.

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  Grand Army Plaza & Pulitzer Fountain, New York City, restored in 1990.

• 

  Dana Discovery Center, Central Park, New York City, completed in 1993.

• 

  William Sidney Mount House, Stony Brook, NY, restored in 1993.

• 

  Bonnie Dune, Southampton, NY, restored in 1993.

• 

  Casa Italiana, Columbia University, New York City, restored in 1996.

• 

  Siegel Student Center, Sarah Lawrence College, addition completed in 1998.

• 

  Middle School Building, Trinity School, New York City, completed in 1998.

• 

  Brooklyn College Library, restored in 2002.

Written Works[edit]

Among the written works of architects who at one time or another were associates or partners at Buttrick White & Burtis are the following:

• William W. Braham. Modern Color/Modern Architecture: Amédée Ozenfant and the Genealogy of Color in Modern Architecture (London: Ashgate, 2002).
• Michael M. Dwyer, ed., with preface by Mark Rockefeller. Great Houses of the Hudson River (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 2001).
• Michael M. Dwyer. Carolands (Redwood City, CA: San Mateo County Historical Association, 2006).
• Jean Parker Phifer. Public Art New York (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009).
• Samuel G. White. The Houses of McKim, Mead & White (New York: Rizzoli, 1998).
• Samuel G. White and Elizabeth White. McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks (New York: Rizzoli, 2003).
• Samuel G. White and Elizabeth White. Stanford White Architect (New York: Rizzoli, 2008).
• Samuel G. White. Nice House (New York: The Monacelli Press, 2010).

References[edit]