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Ellis, Harvey
(b ?Rochester, NY, 17 Oct 1852; d Syracuse, NY, 2 Jan 1904). American architect, painter and designer. Between 1879 and 1885 he and a brother, Charles Ellis, maintained an architectural partnership in Rochester that produced commercial buildings and fashionable residences. Simultaneously he exhibited traditional representational drawings and watercolours in the Rochester Art Club. In 1885 Harvey Ellis won first prize and considerable fame with a beautiful perspective for a monument to General Ulysses Grant (1822–85), sponsored and published by American Architect and Building News (xvii (1885), p. 175). Ellis worked as an architectural draughtsman and designer for a succession of Midwestern firms, including LeRoy Sunderland Buffington in Minneapolis, MN (1887–9); Eckel & Mann in St Joseph, MO (1889–91); and, when the latter partnership was dissolved, until 1893 with George R. Mann in St Louis, MO. During this period a number of his perspectives of various projects were published in American Architect and Building News and Inland Architect, where they had a considerable influence. They were delightfully imaginative, romantic interpretations of current 19th-century styles, picturesquely interpreted by Ellis’s pictorial vision. By late 1893 Ellis had returned to Rochester. He concentrated on painting, in a moderately avant-garde style that stressed abstract two-dimensional pictorial organization (e.g. The Hourglass, 1898; Rochester, NY, Strong Mus.; see 1972–3 exh. cat.) rather than the earlier illusionism, graphic designs for posters (e.g. Third National Cycle Exhibition, 1897; Rochester, NY, Strong Mus.), magazine covers and designs for stained glass. Certain of the furniture designs produced by GUSTAV STICKLEY and his workshop have also been attributed to Ellis, although there is no conclusive documentation to substantiate the claims. Ellis helped to organize the Rochester Arts and Crafts Society in 1897 and, at the invitation of Stickley, publisher of the Craftsman, he moved to Syracuse to become a designer for the magazine in 1903, a position he held until his death the following year.
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