Architect
Centurion, 1910–1925
Born 19 October 1871 in Washington, District of Columbia
Died 29 May 1925 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
, Sleepy Hollow, New York
Proposed by John M. Carrère and Karl Bitter
Elected 4 June 1910 at age thirty-eight
Century Memorial
In some respects Donn Barber was one of the most versatile of American architects. Standing always for simplicity of form and durability of construction, he divided his abounding individual energy between the construction of a long list of notable structures—such as the New York Cotton Exchange, the Lotos Club building, the National Park Bank, the Institute of Musical Art—and constant study of plans for relieving congestion on Manhattan Island or for developing the program, nearest of all to his own heart, of “Better Homes in America.” Like all of our best contemporary architects, he recognized that the effort of the artist must be directed to replacing, with a sense of architectural beauty, appropriateness and harmony, the nineteenth-century American appetite for the startling or the common-place.
Alexander Dana Noyes
1926 Century Association Yearbook
