He was born in 1874 in
Bergen Point, New Jersey, to Mr. and Mrs. Chester D. Ayres. He graduated from
Trinity School, a
preparatory school located in
New York City. His four-year term expired in 1925, and he did not seek reappointment. The same year, he was one of the three judges on a panel which awarded the commission for the
Liberty Memorial in
Kansas City, Missouri, to
Harold Van Buren Magonigle. In 1935, Ayres was elected into the
National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full member in 1936.
Meuse-Argonne Chapel One of Ayres' most prominent commissions came in 1925, when he was asked to design a chapel for an American military cemetery in Europe. Congress created the
American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) in 1923 in part to consolidate the
United States Department of War's divisions for military cemeteries and for stone and bronze battlefield map memorials, and in part to build, operate, and maintain American military cemeteries overseas. The ABMC was deeply influenced by
Charles Moore, the chair of the Commission of Fine Arts and whose agency had final approval over the design of the cemeteries and memorials. Ayres was commissioned to design the chapel at Meuse-Argonne, the largest and most important of the three sites. Ayres submitted two simple, classical designs and one French Romanesque design. The chapel was dedicated on
Memorial Day in 1937, the 20th anniversary of the
American entry into World War I. Ayres' continued to serve the architectural profession in many important ways in the 1920s. He was one of three judges on a panel which in 1925 awarded the design for the proposed
Theodore Roosevelt memorial to be built in
West Potomac Park in
Washington, D.C. In 1926, Rutgers University presented him with an honorary
Doctor of Humane Letters. He also was a member of the
Prix de Rome scholarship and
Rome Prize fellowship committees from 1926 to 1938.
Federal Triangle In 1927, Ayres won a major commission to design the U.S. Department of Commerce building, an award which became one of his most important architectural designs. He also played a major role on a board which helped plan the
Federal Triangle government office building complex. The U.S. federal government had struggled with the need to build a number of large governmental office buildings since the mid-1910s, but little had been done. In January 1924, the Public Buildings Commission recommended that a new series of federal office buildings be built near the
White House. In 1926, the U.S. Congress enacted the
Public Buildings Act, which, among other things, authorized the
United States Department of the Treasury to begin construction on the
Federal Triangle complex of buildings. However, disagreements among the three planning bodies overseeing the project (Commission on Fine Arts, Public Buildings Commission, and U.S. Treasury) proved so fundamental that a year-long delay ensued. To end the disagreement, a Board of Architectural Consultants was created on May 19, 1927, to advise the groups on the development of the project. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
Charles S. Dewey recommended Ayres as one of the consultants, and his appointment was almost immediately approved. Design work on all buildings was postponed in May 1927 to allow the Board to conduct its work. The Board of Architectural Consultants first met on May 23, 1927, at which time it considered a plan to create a single building ringing Federal Triangle rather than six to eight individual structures. In June 1927, Ayres and the other consultants approved construction of the Department of Commerce and
Internal Revenue Service structures as stand-alone buildings on the previously proposed sites. A month later, Ayres and the other Board members proposed constructing eight buildings, connected by plazas, semi-circular
colonnades, and other architectural and landscaping elements. The Department of Commerce building was set on the west side of 15th Street NW between B and D Streets NW. Both the Board and Treasury Secretary Mellon rejected the
Modern style then heavily in vogue. The first would be a Circular Plaza (inspired by the
Place Vendôme) bisected by 12th Street NW, and which would require the demolition of the
Old Post Office Pavilion. Although this building was never built, Congress honored the contract and in the Public Buildings Act named the firm again as the Commerce building's designer. But not all design choices were left up to Ayres. By March 1927, government officials had already decided that the Commerce building should be long—making it the then-largest building in the District of Columbia. Work on the building site was expected to begin by March 31, 1927. Survey work at the site began on that date even though final plans for the project were still unclear. Even though he was designing the Commerce building, Ayres continued to participate in the work of the Board of Architectural Consultants. He and the other Board members reviewed all designs for the Federal Triangle project in the fall of 1927, and demolition work began on the Commerce site in September 1927. By mid-1927, Ayres was proposing a grandiose building to anchor the western end of Federal Triangle. The proposed building had of interior space (more than 60 percent larger than originally planned). There were 15 entrances and 16 interior stairways. Ayres had planned a main lobby that was Neoclassical in design. However, water pressure from the submerged Tiber Creek would make it difficult to drive the piles. Ayres and his team devised a plan whereby a
deep-sea diver descended into the underground Tiber Creek and drilled a hole deep into the earth. Water from the Tiber was utilized as an air conditioning system to cool the building. However, although Ayres had proposed an Italian Renaissance style for the Commerce building, few of the other building proposals had adopted a classical design. On November 25, 1927, the Commission on Fine Arts adopted a requirement that all the Federal Triangle buildings have a "uniform appearance" and height (six stories), limiting the Board's design deliberations (and Ayres' proposal for the Commerce building).
Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon imposed a requirement in December 1927 that all the buildings be built in the Neoclassical architectural style. Ayres modified the exterior design of his structure accordingly. By March 1928, newspapers were reporting that the Commerce and Internal Revenue buildings would be constructed first. Ayres' design, however, was still in flux, as the Board of Architectural Consultants refused to give its approval to his plan. Although the size of the Commerce building had stabilized by March 1928, some Board members still suggested that both 15th and 14th Streets NW be submerged in tunnels beneath the structure. The Board of Architectural Consultants and Ayres met in July 1928 to consider ways in which the construction program might be sped up, and devised plans to have four approved buildings (Internal Revenue, Justice, Labor, and Ayres' Commerce structure) completed by 1932. By October 1928, the Board of Architectural Consultants had agreed with prior decisions that no office building should be constructed on the
National Mall, and that this space should be reserved for museums. Subsequently,
John Russell Pope was asked in September 1929 to bring a more uniform style to the buildings. Nonetheless, within this more uniform approach, a variety of styles could be used, and were:
Italian Renaissance for the Department of Commerce building,
Corinthian for the
National Archives building, and
Ionic for the Post Office Department. Meanwhile, Ayres and the Board of Architectural Consultants worked with sculptors, painters, and others to design more than 100 statues, fountains, bronze doors, murals, plaques, and panels (both interior and exterior) throughout the complex. Although this initial meeting left the issue unresolved, Ayres and the Board later agreed to Mellon's wishes in April and the two buildings switched plots. President (and former Commerce Secretary)
Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone of the Commerce building on June 10, 1929, using the same
trowel President
George Washington had used to lay the cornerstone of the
U.S. Capitol. The contract for its limestone facade—according to at least one newspaper account, the largest stone contract in world history—was awarded in April. The cost of the building had risen to $17.5 million. Ayres continued his work on the Board of Architectural Consultants into the mid-1930s. From 1931 to 1936, the Board struggled to accommodate the need for automobile parking at the complex while also making Federal Triangle pedestrian-friendly. The Board began studying traffic issues in late 1927. To achieve some of the traffic and parking goals, Ayres and the Board voted to eliminate the east-west streets and diagonal avenues, leaving only the north-south streets through the area, and 12th and 9th Streets NW were submerged in tunnels beneath the National Mall. In the first major change to the Board's "final" plan of 1929, a proposed "Grand Plaza" between the Commerce and Post Office buildings was abandoned in favor of a parking lot. The Board considered a number of other solutions to the need to accommodate the more than 7,500 cars expected to arrive every day (including an underground bus terminal and underground parking garage under the Grand Plaza), but in the end only approved a small number of underground parking spaces beneath the
Apex Building. The New York Chapter of the
American Institute of Architects awarded him its
Medal of Honor in 1933. In 1936, he was elected to the
National Academy of Design. He wed Mrs. Edith Twining (née Donald, widow of
Major Kinsley Twining) On November 28, 1928. He became stepfather to Twining's son and daughter, and his stepson Kinsley Twining became American vice-consul in Singapore. • Brick Presbyterian Church Ayres' was not only a noted architect in his own right, but he helped lead many successful design teams as well. His teams won for York & Sawyer commissions for the Federal Building in
Honolulu,
Hawaii, (since replaced by the
Prince Kuhio Federal Building) and
33 Liberty Street, Manhattan, New York City (the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York building). ==Death==