Milton Bennett Medary

The artistic instinct of Milton Bennett Medary, especially his admirable sense of appropriateness in the designing of public works, won him a place of unusual importance as advisory architect in large constructive undertakings. He had a voice in the Federal Commission of Fine Arts, appointed by President Harding with nation-wide responsibilities, and was a member of President Coolidge’s National Park and Planning Commission. Secretary Mellon placed him on the important board of architectural consultants for the plan of public buildings harmoniously grouped at the national capital, confronting Pennsylvania Avenue from Capitol Hill to the Treasury and supplanting the mongrel private structures which have so long disfigured that historic thoroughfare. To this ambitious undertaking Medary gave the best of his artistic judgment and imagination; taking an active part in a program which is destined, probably within our time, to make Washington architecturally the most dignified and beautiful of all the national capitals.

The buildings planned by Medary himself were distinguished by grace and dignity; always by that special adaptation to their surroundings which played so great a part with the great mediæval architects and was all but forgotten during the two or three centuries after them.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1930 Century Association Yearbook