McKim was born in
Chester County, Pennsylvania. His parents were
James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian minister, and Sarah Speakman McKim. They were active
abolitionists and he was named after
Charles Follen, another abolitionist and a
Unitarian minister. After attending Harvard University, he studied architecture at the
École des Beaux-Arts in
Paris before joining the office of
Henry Hobson Richardson in 1870. McKim formed his own firm in partnership with
William Rutherford Mead, joined in 1877 by fellow Richardson protégé
Stanford White. in New York City For ten years, the firm became primarily known for their open-plan informal summer houses. McKim became best known as an exponent of Beaux-Arts architecture in styles of the
American Renaissance, exemplified by the
Boston Public Library (1888–95), and several works in
New York City. Among his New York City works were the Morningside Heights campus of
Columbia University (1893, including
Low Memorial Library), the
University Club of New York clubhouse (1899), the
Pierpont Morgan Library (1903–06),
New York Penn Station (1904–10), and the
Butler Institute of American Art in
Youngstown, Ohio (1919). He also designed the
Howard Mansion (1896) at
Hyde Park, New York, and the
Bowdoin College Museum of Art (1894) in
Brunswick, Maine. McKim, with the aid of
Richard Morris Hunt, was instrumental in the formation of the American School of Architecture in Rome in 1894, which has become the
American Academy in Rome, and designed the main campus buildings with his firm McKim, Mead, and White. McKim first married Annie Bigelow in 1874, and after divorcing Bigelow, married Julia Amory Appleton in 1885. McKim died at age 62 in
St. James, New York on September 14, 1909.
Memberships McKim was a member of the
Congressional commission for the improvement of the
Washington, D.C., park system, the New York Art Commission, the
Accademia di San Luca (
Rome, 1899), the
American Academy in Rome and the Architectural League. He was an honorary member and former president of the
American Institute of Architects, and honorary member of the Society of Mural Painters. He became a
National Academician in 1907. He belonged to the university,
Lambs, and
Racquet and Tennis Clubs of New York, and to the
St. Botolph and
Somerset Clubs of Boston. ==Awards and honors==