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  • Architect/Firm:  Fenimore Bate
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Name: Fenimore C Bate

Birth/Established: 1857   Death/Dissolved: June 27, 1903

 


Biography:  
  Fenimore C. Bate was born in Cleveland. He first appears in the 1876-7 Cleveland City Directory as a draftsman working for architect Walter Blythe. In 1883, he was a draftsman and, the following year, an architect for the Cleveland Water Works Department. By 1885 he was in business for himself as an architect. He was the architect of numerous houses for the middle and upper middle classes as well as of commercial buildings at a time when Cleveland's population was booming. His works were well documented in the architectural journals of the time. Several significant examples of Bate-designed Queen Anne houses survive. These include the Schellentrager House (built 1893), 690 Lakeview Road; the Henry Trenkamp House (1894-5), 1905 East 89th Street; and the Latham Brightman House, now the Holmes County Historical Society (1901) in Millersburg, Ohio. His houses were built throughout Cleveland, northeast Ohio cities and towns, including Fremont and Toledo, and Indianapolis, Indiana. An article in the March 17, 1888 "Cleveland Town Topics" magazine said that Bate-designed homes "all show a refreshing departure from the stereotyped styles of a few years ago". He is best known as the architect of the Romanesque Revival-style Cleveland Grays Armory (1893), 1234 Bolivar Road. He was also a member of the Cleveland Grays.

Later in his career he designed more tenement or apartment buildings, a popular building type in turn-of-the-century Cleveland. Architect Edward E. Smith was a draftsman who worked for Fenimore Bate from 1889 until 1894. Throughout Bate's career he designed commercial and industrial buildings. The Megerth Block (1892-3), 8620 - 6 Cedar Avenue, and the addition to the Standard Lighting Building (1895), 4419-37 Perkins Avenue, are two extant commercial-industrial use buildings designed by Bate. He was also the architect of several hotels and hotel additions, though apparently none of those survive. There is an article in the September 22, 1900 issue of the "Interstate Architect" that states that Bate was injured in an accident in his office where he dropped a battery with acid striking him in the face and neck causing him temporary blindness. After a period of failing health, Fenimore Bate died on June 27, 1903 at the age of forty six of apoplexy at home in his New Amsterdam apartment. He was buried in Lake View Cemetery. He left his estate to his wife Helen, including property that he owned on East 20th Street occupied by the Fenimore Apartments.