James Roland Willett (1831–1907)
February 8, 2013 · by Admin.
An Irish immigrant who settled with his family in Philadelphia, James Roland Willett studied Mine Engineering at the Polytechnic College of the State of Pennsylvania. He joined the Union Army as an engineer in the Civil War, producing a survey of Nashville, Tennessee and publishing a technical article in The United States Service Magazine. He settled in Chicago in the 1870s and designed one of the city’s early elegant apartment buildings. Willett served as architect for the Eastern Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee, considered the first asylum to adopt the “cottage system” in 1882, the same year that he was appointed school architect. -https://chicagohistoricschools.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/james-roland-willett-1831-1907/
https://chicago.curbed.com/maps/gilded-age-historic-mansions-map
https://ia800409.us.archive.org/5/items/inlandarchitect32/inlandarchitect32.pdf