He met his longstanding partner,
Chester Holmes Aldrich, when they worked together at the office of
Carrère and Hastings in the years before the turn of the 20th century. They formed their partnership after Delano's return from Europe in 1903 and almost immediately won commissions from the
Rockefeller family, among others. Delano & Aldrich tended to adapt conservative
Georgian and
Federal architectural styles for its townhouses, churches, schools, and a spate of social clubs for the
Astors,
Vanderbilts, and the
Whitneys. Separately (Delano was the more prolific) and in tandem they designed a number of buildings at
Yale. Delano taught at Columbia University from 1903 to 1910. Delano alone won the commission for the second-largest residence in the United States,
Oheka, overlooking
Cold Spring Harbor on
Long Island, New York for financier
Otto Kahn. Built from 1914 to 1919 in French
chateau style, with gardens by
Olmsted Brothers, Oheka ranges over 109,000 square feet (10,000 m2) and was staffed with 125 people. In 1922, Delano designed the interiors of the
Grand Central Art Galleries, an artists' cooperative established that year by
John Singer Sargent,
Edmund Greacen,
Walter Leighton Clark, and others. Eight years later Delano and Aldrich were asked by the organization to design the
U.S. Pavilion at the
Venice Biennale. The purchase of the land, design, and construction was paid for by the Galleries and personally supervised by Clark. As he wrote in the 1934 catalog: Pursuing our purpose of putting American art prominently before the world, the directors a few years ago appropriated the sum of $25,000 for the erection of an exhibition building in Venice on the grounds of the International Biennial. Messrs. Delano and Aldrich generously donated the plans for this building which is constructed of Istrian marble and pink brick and more than holds its own with the twenty-five other buildings in the Park owned by the various European governments. The pavilion, owned and operated by the Galleries, opened on May 4, 1930. Delano's sense of humor was expressed in some his architectural details and
friezes, such as the low-relief frieze of tortoises and hares in the apartment block at 1040 Park Avenue, and
backgammon club rooms ornamented like backgammon boards. At the
Marine Air Terminal at
LaGuardia Airport, built for
Pan American Airways' transatlantic
seaplane service in 1939 and the oldest such passenger air facility still in use, his
Art Deco terra cotta friezes feature
flying fish. "There is as much that is new to be said in architecture today by a man of imagination who employs traditional motifs as there is in literature by an author, who, to express his thought, still employs the English language," Delano wrote in 1928. In Washington, D.C., Delano was the architect for the 1927 renovation to the
White House, which later led to structural problems and rebuilding during the Truman Administration. (
See White House Reconstruction.) He served on the
National Capital Planning Commission and the
U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1924 to 1928, including a term as vice chairman in 1928. This service led to his firm receiving the design contract for the
New Post Office building, completed in 1934, in the
Federal Triangle complex. Delano served on the board of design for the
1939 New York World's Fair and consulted on the controversial White House
Truman Balcony in 1946, prior to the reconstruction project of 1949–52. Delano's awards and honors include election to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters and the
National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1940. In 1948, Delano was commissioned to design the
Epinal American Cemetery and Memorial (1948–56), one of fourteen
World War II monuments constructed abroad by the
American Battle Monuments Commission. Delano also designed terminals at La Guardia and Miami airports. He was named an officer by the French
Legion of Honour and was an academician of the National Academy of Design. In 1953, the
American Institute of Architects awarded William Adams Delano its
Gold Medal. Delano continued to practice almost until his death in 1960. Aldrich had left the partnership in 1935 to become the resident director of the
American Academy at Rome. ==Marriage and descendants==