(b Dayton, OH, 1860; d Los Angeles, CA, c. 1900). American architect. He received little formal architectural training, having had a brief apprenticeship in Dayton in the architectural office of his uncle Luthor Peters (d 1921), followed by a period as a draughtsman in the office of Sumner P. Hunt (1865–1938) in Los Angeles, where he moved in 1891 for health reasons. In 1893 his first and only major work was constructed. The Bradbury Building, on Third Avenue and Broadway, invokes 19th-century traditions of industrial and commercial architecture, particularly those of the early Chicago school, with its steel-frame construction and Romanesque details. Drab and undistinguished on its exterior, the interior of the five-storey building opens into a light-flooded court, surrounded by series of iron balconies, galleries, and exposed lifts and stairs, framed in masonry. The expressive potential of this open, light-filled construction is seen even in the glass letter-chutes that run parallel to the lifts. Wyman’s visionary concept was probably inspired by the imagery in Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward (Boston, 1888), which describes a futuristic architecture, with one building referred to as ‘a vast hall of light’ surrounded by windows and capped by a glass dome. The Bradbury Building stands as a precursor of the utopian tradition of later architecture in Los Angeles. After receiving several commissions in the wake of the successful reception of the Bradbury Building, Wyman enrolled in a correspondence course in architecture, after which he lost interest in the use of light as a formal element. His later office buildings, most of which have been destroyed, were characterized by their weighty solidity, as were his frame buildings, for example the National Soldiers’ Home (destr.) at Sawtell, CA.