History

Charles Tattersall Ingham (1876-1960) was born in Pittsburgh to English-born Tattersall and Ellen (Ward) Ingham, January 1876. He was educated in Pittsburgh and Philipsburg, Pa. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania from 1893-95 but left school before graduating, and is said to have traveled to England with his parents. He is listed in the 1897 Pittsburgh city directory as a draftsman residing at 252 Bouquet Street, and is said to have worked for the Pittsburgh office of the Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns, then working on Horne’s Department Store, East Liberty Market House (now Motor Square Garden), and various residential commissions. In 1898 Ingham exhibited sketches of buildings in York, England, at the first architectural exhibition held in Pittsburgh (indirect confirmation of an earlier trip to England) and received honorable mention for his competition design for an entrance to Schenley Park. He may have worked in Peabody & Stearns Boston office in 1899. In 1900 Ingham was working as a draftsman at Rutan & Russell; he was associated with this firm for the better part a decade.

William Boyd, Jr. (1882-1947) was born in Scotland on August 24, 1882 to William and Mary Boyd. He and his family immigrated to the United States in 1888 and were living in Pittsburgh by 1900. He attended Shady Side Academy and was graduated in 1902. Boyd was graduated with a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907. He continued his studies in the Atelier [Joseph-Eugne-Armand] Duquesne at the cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris 1907-08. During this period he went on sketching tours of Scotland and England, September through October 1907, and of France and Italy, April through August 1908. He returned to Pittsburgh and according to the 1909 city directory was an architect whose address was his parent’s home at 436 Morewood Avenue. In 1910 Boyd almost certainly was working at the office of Rutan & Russell, as was Charles Ingham. Boyd exhibited six drawings of Italian and one of French architecture at the 1910 Pittsburgh Architectural Club (PAC) Exhibition. Sketch in Siena (exhibited as Church Doorway, Siena was illustrated in the catalogue). Boyd also began teaching architecture, drawing, and later water color, at Carnegie Technical Schools in 1910.

Ingham & Boyd opened their office in Room 99, 323 Fourth Avenue (Vandergrift Building; now demolished) in 1911 and first exhibited their work in the 1913 PAC Exhibition. Boyd designed a house in Edgeworth for his brother Marcus (1911-12); the house was exhibited and a photograph published in the 1913 PAC exhibition catalogue. Boyd moved from the Emerson Apartments in Shadyside in 1917 to a house of his own design on Pioa Road in Edgeworth, Pa. William Boyd died March 1, 1947.

Ingham & Boyd designed fine residences throughout Western Pennsylvania, especially in Edgeworth and Sewickley; a few churches, most notably Waverly Presbyterian; many school buildings, including the Henry Clay Frick Training School for Teachers and Westinghouse High School the latter is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a City of Pittsburgh Historic Structure and all the school buildings for Mt. Lebanon Township 1917 through the 1930s; prominent public buildings such as the first building for the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania; the Board of Public Education Administration Building; and Buhl Planetarium (now part of the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum). Perhaps the firm’s most prominent project is the National Historic Landmark garden community of Chatham Village, located on Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh (in association with Clarence Stein and Henry Wright). Inspired by the British Garden City movement, Chatham Village offered country living to limited income city workers. As Pittsburgh’s first all-gas community, the village’s cleanliness was the avant-garde of the time. The grime and grit free area is readily accessible to the city’s amenities, while still exuding the charm and quiet that gave the community its hallmark.