William Mitchell Kendall

• Name — William M. Kendall • Birth Name — William Mitchell Kendall • Born — 13 February 1856 • Birthplace — Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, US • Died — 8 August 1941 • Place of death — Bar Harbor, Maine, US • Occupation — Architect • Education — * Harvard University • Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Illustration — Manhattan Municipal Building (1914) • Illustration — Columbia University's Casa Italiana (1927) • Illustration — City Hall in Burlington, Vermont (1928)

Born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Kendall received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1876, studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1876 to 1878, and completed a year of travel and study in France and Italy. In 1882, Kendall joined the firm of McKim, Mead & White where he worked on many significant buildings, including the Morgan Library, the Low Memorial Library and other buildings at Columbia University, the Washington Square Arch, Bellevue Hospital, and the Main Post Office (James Farley Post Office), all in New York City; Arlington Memorial Bridge, the Army War College, and the restoration of St. John's Episcopal Church, in Washington, D.C.; the American Academy in Rome; and the Harvard University School of Business, many of the Harvard gates, and the Plymouth Rock Memorial (Pilgrim Memorial State Park), in Massachusetts. It was Kendall who proposed inscribing the quotation from Herodotus on the frieze of the New York Post Office: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Kendall became a partner of McKim, Mead & White in 1906. Kendall served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1916 to 1921, and was a member of its Committee for the Beautification of Permanent American Military Cemeteries in France and England, which traveled to inspect proposed sites and subsequently recommended architectural treatment for the America's European war cemeteries. In the 1920s, he designed war memorials at several of the cemeteries.