He was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States in 1848, at age eight. He worked as an apprentice in the office of J & A Douglas in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He entered the
University of Wisconsin to study architecture in 1859. He returned to
Brooklyn, New York in 1861 and continued his studies at the
Cooper Union. He served as Superintendent of Buildings for the City of Brooklyn from 1874 to 1876. In 1879, he was appointed Superintendent of Buildings for the Board of Education of the City of Brooklyn, a position he held until his death in 1898. During this period he designed all the school buildings in the city of Brooklyn. ==Selected works==