Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909) studied shortly for a year at the Harvard Lawrence Scientific School and then for three years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1870 he joined the office of H. H. Richardson in New York, where he worked until opening his own practice in 1983. William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928) was educated at Amherst College, after which he worked shortly as an engineer in New York. As an architect he worked for a year in the office of Russell Sturgis, leaving in1872 at which point he shared and office with McKim. The two formed a loose partnership that became legitimized with the addition of William B. Bigelow in 1877, forming the firm of McKim, Mead and Bigelow. Stanford White (1853-1906) had no formal education, but received much exposure to the arts while growing up in New York, emerging as a talented draughtsman. In 1872 he worked in the office of H.H. Richardson, where he remained until he joined McKim and Mead in 1879, after Bigelow had left the firm.

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