Military service Post served in the
American Civil War under
General Burnside at the
Battle of Fredericksburg and later rose to the rank of
colonel in the
New York National Guard. Architect In 1867, Post founded his own architectural firm, which expanded in 1904 when two of his sons,
James Otis Post and
William Stone Post, joined him to form George B. Post and Sons. Post served as the sixth president of the
American Institute of Architects from 1896 to 1899. He also trained architect
Arthur Bates Jennings. Post designed many of the prominent private homes in various places, with many concentrated in
New York City and
Bernardsville, NJ. He also designed many prominent commercial and public buildings. A true member of the
American Renaissance, Post engaged notable artists and artisans to add decorative sculpture and murals to his architectural designs. Among those who worked with Post were the sculptor
Karl Bitter and painter
Elihu Vedder. Post was a founding member of the
National Arts Club, serving as the club's inaugural president from 1898 to 1905. In 1905, his two sons were taken into the partnership, and they continued to lead the firm after Post's death, notably as the designers of many
Statler Hotels in cities across the United States. From that time forward, the firm carried on under the stewardship of Post's grandson, Edward Everett Post (1904–2006) until the late twentieth century.
Sarah Landau's publication
George B. Post, Architect: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist (1998) inspired a retrospective exhibition in 1998–99 to revisit Post's work at the Society. In 2014, curator, architect
George Ranalli presented an exhibition of Post's drawings and photographs of the design of the
City College of New York's main campus buildings, on loan from the
New-York Historical Society. Post received the
AIA Gold Medal in 1911. His extensive archive is in the collection at the
New-York Historical Society.
Private residences The
Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, which Post designed in partnership with
Richard Morris Hunt, was an English
Jacobethan Gothic red-brick and limestone
chateau that stood at the corner of East
57th Street and
Fifth Avenue and was one of the most opulent single-family homes of its time. It featured a lavishly scrolled cast-iron gate forged in
Paris (now in
Central Park), sculptural reliefs by
Karl Bitter (now in the
Sherry-Netherland Hotel), an ornate reddish-brown marble fireplace sculpted by
Augustus Saint-Gaudens (now in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art), and elaborate interior decoration by Frederick Kaldenberg,
John LaFarge,
Philip Martiny,
Frederick W. MacMonnies, Rene de Quelin, and
Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his brother Julius. The mansion was razed in 1927 for the construction of the
Bergdorf Goodman Building at 754 Fifth Avenue. The mansion was photographed by
Albert Levy while being built. Post also designed the palazzo across the street that faced the
Vanderbilt Mansion for
Collis P. Huntington (1889–94). In
Newport, Rhode Island, he built a home for the president of the
Louisville and Nashville Railroad, C.C. Baldwin, "Chateau-Nooga" or the Baldwin Cottage (1879–80), a polychromatic exercise in the "Quaint Style" with bargeboards and half-timbering;
John La Farge provided stained glass panels. Post also designed many of the
gilded-age mansions found in
Bernardsville, NJ, and was credited more than anyone with selling wealthy New Yorkers on the idea of establishing a country home in the
Somerset Hills. where he designed the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building. In 1894, Post, along with J. Herbert Ballantine,
Robert L. Stevens, and Edward T. H. Talmadge each pledged $8,000 to purchase land in
Bernardsville, New Jersey, to establish the Somerset Hills Country Club, which, after being built on the banks of Ravine Lake was relocated in 1917 to its present site Many of Post's designs were landmarks of the era. Post's
Equitable Life Building (1868–70) was the first office building designed to use passenger elevators; Post himself leased the upper floors when contemporaries predicted they could not be rented. His
Western Union Telegraph Building (1872–75) at
Dey Street in Lower Manhattan was the first office building to rise as high as ten stories, a forerunner of
skyscrapers to come. Post's twenty-story
New York World Building (1889–90) was the tallest building in New York City when it was erected in "Newspaper Row" facing
City Hall Park. == Personal life ==