This firm represents the collaboration of H. Louis Duhring, R. Brognard Okie, and Carl A. Ziegler. It was launched soon after Duhring returned from Italy, where he had traveled, supported by a Stewardson Scholarship, to sketch. The firm continued in operation until 1918, when Okie resigned; it was then succeeded by Duhring & Ziegler. All three partners were interested in the Pennsylvania Farmhouse version of the Colonial Revival, and that interest is reflected in the number of residences which they designed in the environs of Philadelphia. Said to "reflect in the houses they design both the history of their country when it was in the making and the character of the land on which the houses are built," according to Augusta Owen Patterson, Duhring, Okie & Ziegler provided their residences with "comfortable, homelike qualities," and they were regularly published in the influential compilations which appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the American Country Houses of Today series.
Their early success, however, was chiefly based on a connection to Dr. George Woodward's philanthropic development in Chestnut Hill and Duhring's experimentation in cluster housing. From this rather modest set of designs, they moved into the thriving country house market available to designers in the Philadelphia area in the early twentieth century. Competing with such firms as Mellor & Meigs and Edmund B. Gilchrist, Duhring, Okie & Ziegler nonetheless managed to carve a niche in the Colonial Revival arena. Like their competitors, they were featured prominently in Thomas Nolan's "Recent Suburban Architecture in Philadelphia and Vicinity," an article which appeared in the Architectural Record (March 1906).
Written by
Sandra L. Tatman.
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