Walker O. Cain


Walker O. Cain NA was a prize-winning American architect.

Early life and education

Cain was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Case Western Reserve University for five years. In 1937, he went on to study at Fontainebleau, France, where he was a recipient of the Schweinfurth Scholarship.
In 1939, he won the Henry Adams Prize from the American Institute of Architects. In 1938 and 1939, he won honorable mention in architecture in the competition for the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome.
In 1940, Cain returned to the United States to study architecture at Princeton University. In that year he won the Rome Prize. Upon graduation from Princeton with a master's degree he moved to New York City and joined the firm of McKim, Mead, and White. In 1961 that firm was superseded by Steinman, Corrigill, Cain, and White; then Steinmann, Cain, and White;. By 1971 the firm was superseded by Walker O. Cain Associates based in New York where Cain was a senior partner. Cain also served as chairman of the board of the American Academy in Rome from 1974 to 1984. In 1975, he was named as a member of the National Academy of Design.

Notable works

Cain's notable building designs include St. Vartan Cathedral, the Armenian church at Second Ave. and 34th Street in Manhattan ; the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology, in Washington, D.C.; the Art Museum, McCormick Hall, Jadwin Gymnasium, Caldwell Field House, and the Computing Center at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey; as well as the Mickel Library of Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The firm that was to become Walker O. Cain Associates designed the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine around 1965. Members of the firm also designed the Casco Bank and Trust Company building in Portland, Maine by 1970, the Maine State Museum in Augusta in 1971, and the Maynard Center for staff housing at Brooklyn Hospital Center in 1976.. Cain was also an architectural artist. He did a number of drawings of the collegiate chapter houses of St. Anthony Hall in 1947 for their membership directory.