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New York work of the firm includes the Colony, Brook and Knickerbocker Clubs, the slightly Gothicized Wall Street 'scraper of Brown Bros. D. & A. altered India House and are planning a new Union Club. They have done numerous buildings for Yale and for Lawrenceville School. They are designing the new Yale Divinity School group entire. Socialite daughters are educated amidst D. & A. architecture at Miss Chapin's and Miss Nightingale's schools in Manhattan. D. & A.'s ecclesiastical treatment of the Georgian style is exemplified in Manhattan's Third Church of Christ Scientist. U. S. architecture will soon be represented on the Place de la Concorde, Parisian trove of French Renaissance, by a new U. S. Embassy building done by D. & A. They are also architects for the new Japanese Embassy in Washington.
D. & A. designs are never spectacular. Praised by other architects for their finesse, their nicety in detail, their discreet erudition, they may be truly said to constitute an architectural aristocracy.
Mr. Delano and Mr. Aldrich both worked for the late great Carrere & Hastings, whose architectural fidelity they have inherited. They met originally at the Paris Beaux Arts, whither Mr. Delano had gone from Yale. Mr. Aldrich from a long apprenticeship. No profession does more for its students, and both these gentlemen are constantly busy on the juries and committees of the Beaux Arts Institute. Mr. Delano is president of the New York chapter of the A. I. A., a member of Secretary Mellon's architectural board and the National Capital Park & Planning Committee.
At the Versailles Conference it was Architect Delano who, by special appointment, opened the mail. He paints watercolors for diversion, jots down architectural sketches during his morning train ride from his home in the D. & A.-dotted Long Island countryside. In a London speech he recently voiced his disapproval of the indiscriminate use of skyscrapers, an unusual sentiment for a U. S. architect, a sentiment which illuminates the philosophy of his firm. Regarding architecture as valuable not for bulk or mass or grand scale, but for exquisite workmanship, Mr. Delano and Mr. Aldrich particularly enjoy residence work. Whatever may be the state of their clients' souls, they will continue to build them more stately mansions for their bodies.