Richard E. Schmidt

Richard Ernest Schmidt (1865–1958) was an American architect, a member of the so-called first Chicago School and a near-contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan.

Schmidt was born in Ebern, Bavaria and brought to America by his parents at the age of one. In 1883 he enrolled in the architecture school at MIT, but left to begin practicing before completing the program, working for such architects as Adolph Cudell and Charles Sumner Frost before eventually settling in Chicago in 1887.

Eight years later, he asked Hugh Mackie Gorden Garden to join him as chief designer, who was also an extremely skilled structural engineer. A native of Canada, Garden had moved to Chicago in the late-1880s, apprenticing with several architectural firms, including Flanders & Zimmerman, Henry Ives Cobb, and Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, then becoming a freelance renderer, which brought him jobs with Howard Van Doren Shaw, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Although known primarily for their commercial and industrial designs, the firm also designed more than 300 hospitals as well as many other public structures, all in a progressive style, similar to Sullivan and Wright.

• Theurer-Wrigley House, Chicago
• Arthur F. Madlener House, Chicago
• Montgomery Ward Company Complex, Chicago
• Humboldt Park Boathouse Pavilion, Chicago
• Cook County Hospital Administration Building, Chicago
• Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago
• Institute of Thermal Research, Buffalo