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S. B. P. Trowbridge

Architect

Centurion, 1895–1925

Full Name Samuel Breck Parkman Trowbridge

Born 20 May 1862 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Died 29 January 1925 in New York (Manhattan), New York

Buried Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York

Proposed by George B. Post, J. Howard Van Amringe, and Frank Dempster Sherman

Elected 7 December 1895 at age thirty-three

Century Memorial

S. Breck Parkman Trowbridge was of the stuff from which good Centurions are made. From the long-distant days of his work at the American School in Athens, through those of his active achievement as a busy architect, he strove unceasingly for the cultivation of his own mind and for the advancement of art in his country. His New York buildings, the Phipps House, the Morgan offices, Altman’s, the Bankers Trust Company, show his rank. Long a valuable participant in the labors of the American Institute of Architects, his later years were given with ardent and unflagging devotion to the service of the American Academy in Rome, of which he was Vice President. The Academy appealed infallibly to every instinct of Breck Trowbridge’s heart; to his love of culture and the humanities, to his sure belief in the classic tradition as the one sure basis for whatever we may attain to in valid artistic freedom, to his contempt for superficial sloppiness.

To his intimates, Trowbridge was one of the most charming of companions, especially afield with rod or gun, by stream or covert, on wild rivers and lonely lakes of the wilderness, or beside the blaze of the camp fire.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1926 Century Association Yearbook