JOHN E. ELLICOTT, Civil Engineer and Architect (1834- )
John E. Ellicott was one of the three engineers noted as founding members of the Baltimore Chapter, A. I. A., 1870-71. He practiced civil engineering and architecture, primarily the former.
He was born in Maryland September 12, 1834, the youngest of four children of Thomas and Louisa (McFadon) Ellicott, members of the Ellicott family of Ellicott City. On November 5, 1856 he married Virginia Gordon of Washington, DC, born September 1834. We do not know if they had children; none is included in the censuses. John Ellicott was still alive in 1881. He had died by 1900 when the census listed Virginia as a widow living in Washington, DC. We do not know their dates of death nor where they are buried.
Ellicott served as an officer of the Confederate Army for the duration of the Civil War, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, serving initially in the Corps of Engineers and later in the Niter and Mining Corps, a unit to keep the confederacy supplied with minerals and metals needed for the war effort.
He may have provided engineering services for the new Baltimore City Hall in the 1860s.
In 1865 Ellicott was a partner with Eben Faxon as architects, civil and mechanical engineers and dealers in real estate. He lived at 37 Mount Vernon Place, now 31 E. Mount Vernon Place. Faxon (1821-1868) had a few known architectural commissions including St. Martin Roman Catholic Church, a masterpiece still standing on Fulton at Fayette Streets, and final design and construction of Latrobe’s west portico for the Roman Catholic Cathedral (now Basilica) of the Assumption. In 1867 Ellicott designed the alterations and additions to the Albert House (by architect Louis L. Long of Baltimore), now 105 E. Monument Street, to convert it to the Mount Vernon Hotel. The additions included a connection to a house on Park Avenue and a massive mansard roof to add another story, all removed in 1902 by architects Parker & Thomas of Baltimore and Boston. George A. Frederick recalled this Ellicott project in his Recollections 1912.
John E. Ellicott’s major architectural project was the Lynchburg Female Orphan Asylum (Miller Home) 1872 in Virginia, an imposing structure in the Italianate style. It was demolished in 1959.
Ellicott received an invitation in 1874 from the Argentine Government to serve as aide to General P. G. T. Beauregard with the ranks of Major General and Brigadier General, respectively, in the Argentine service. Beauregard is reported as having accepted while Ellicott “[did] not evince an inclination at present to do so.” With the news of this invitation, his service “during the late war” was noted as well as his railroad and light-house work, the latter as Chief of the Light-horse Corps on the Pacific Coast. which might have been in the 1850s when Congress passed acts for Pacific Coast lighthouses to aid in navigation by the increasing Pacific traffic following the Gold Rush of 1849.
James T. Wollon, Jr., A.I.A. from research by Philip Stackhouse, John McGrain and S. Allen Chambers, Jr.