William Rutherford Mead was an American architect who was the "Center of the Office" of McKim, Mead, and White, a noted Gilded Age architectural firm. The firm's other founding partners were Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909) and Stanford White (1853–1906).

McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm based in New York City. The firm came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York.