George E. Harney

Both Goodhue and Bacon [subjects of the preceding memorial sketches] left us in the prime of an active life, for which a long career of fresh achievement ought to have been expected. George Edward Harney’s architectural career had been long completed; as with many another fellow-member who had laid down the task of every-day work, the Century was his home, his fellow-Centurions his family. Few of them dropped in at the reading-room of an afternoon or evening without exchanging a word with Harney, who was always in an easy-chair by the table; reading incessantly despite his failing eyesight, yet always looking up with a word of kindly greeting for the new arrival.

Harney began his work in architecture sixty-seven years ago. He often related with conscious pride his first achievement; designs for country cottages, published when he was 18 years old and for which the designer received what would nowadays be called the “honorarium” of thirty dollars. But he had hit upon his life-work, and for the next 53 years was engaged in the construction of country houses, with an occasional church or city building. The Mercantile Library building on Astor Place and the old Stevens house on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue were his work. He was one of those Centurions whose association with us links our ever-changing membership with the Century of what now seems a distant past; he joined the Club in 1877, and only seven surviving members have an older title.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1925 Century Association Yearbook