Description

architect

Alex Morton Emerson was a Special Student in the Department of Architecture at MIT in the class of 1908 where he studied with professor Désiré Despradelle. Several drawings Emerson produced under Despradelle’s supervision are in the collection of the MIT Museum. While a student at MIT he entered a design in a bank building competition run by the publication “Brickbuilder”. Although his design did not place, it was published in a special issue of the publication (vol. 16, no. 2 supp., February 1907, page 35).

In the nineteen teens, after finishing at MIT, Emerson sketched buildings for publications, such as Joseph Everett Chandler’s “The Colonial House in America” (1916) and taught mechanical and architectural drawing at Wentworth Institute of Technology beginning in 1917. During this time he designed a building for the Children’s Art Centre on Rutland Street in Boston, which opened in 1918. The Children’s Art Centre was an experimental endeavor run by the Settlement Museum Association that collected examples of art that could be used to teach children classes in art, design, and handicraft and to facilitate storytelling and other activities.

By the 1920s Emerson had relocated to New York. In the 1930s he worked independently out of a shared office on Park Avenue. In 1941 Emerson was offered work designing a military base in Bermuda for the United States government. Although he began preliminary design work and produced some sketches (three of which are in the collection of the MIT Museum), he ultimately declined the commission, which would have required him to relocate his family. Around the same time, Emerson and a colleague from the Park Avenue office worked together to design a set of garden apartments on land they had purchased in Bound Brook, New Jersey. The apartments served as primary residences for workers at nearly industrial plans contributing to the war effort. In 1950 Emerson moved back to the Boston area where he lived until his death in 1985.

At various points in his career Emerson had offices at:

- 45 Bromfield Street, Boston, Massachusetts (circa 1912)

- 40 Central Street, Boston, Massachusetts (1910s)

- 160/162 Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts (1920s)

- 101 Park Avenue, New York, New York (1930s)

- 367 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York (circa 1920s-1930s)

- 17 E 49th Street, New York, New York (1940s)