James Monroe Hewlett
(1868-1941), architect and artist, was a descendant of an old Long Island family for which the village of Hewlett was named. Hewlett graduated from Columbia University in 1890 and entered the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. After studying in Paris, Hewlett returned to New York in 1894 to help found the architectural firm of Lord & Hewlett that designed a number of buildings, notably Brooklyn Hospital (1920); Danbury, Connecticut Hospital, St. John's Hospital (now the Citicorp office building in Long Island City), Brooklyn Masonic Temple (1909), briefly the Medgar Evers Community College; and the Senator Clark mansion on Fifth Avenue. A mural and set designer as well as an architect, Hewlett painted murals for the Willard Straight Memorial at Cornell University, for the Elihu Root Memorial at Washington, D.C.; the eight historical murals for the Bank of New York and Trust Company building at William and Wall Streets; the George Washington Bicentennial frieze, Washington and His Friends at Mount Vernon (1932), at Mount Vernon; and the four murals in the Veterans' Memorial Hall at the Bronx County Building. Hewlett was president of the Architectural League of New York and headed the Society of Mural Painters. He was elected to the National Academy of Design, was a vice president of the American Institute of Architects, and a director of the Fontainebleau School in Paris. In 1932 Hewlett was appointed resident director of the American Academy in Rome.
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