Frank Pierce Milburn (1859-1926)

Frank Pierce Milburn (1859-1926) received his technical education at the Arkansas University, and the Arkansas Industrial University in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He went to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1884, where he practiced architecture for five years, probably under the direction of his father, who was a contractor. He opened his first office in Kenova, West Virginia, in 1890, but moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1895, when he became the architect for the Southern Railroad Company. Five years later he started a practice in Columbia, South Carolina, and then in 1906 moved to Washington, D.C. He took his designer on as a partner and renamed the firm Milburn, Heister and Company that year.

Milburn achieved great success due to his tireless promotion of his firm and his attempts to seek out work all over the South. He published five books on his projects between 1899 and 1905. As a result, he was a prolific architect, and before his thirty-six-year career ended with his death in 1926, he was known to have designed at least 250 buildings. He was reported to have had the largest architectural business in the South at the turn of the century.

Milburn was most well known for his county courthouses, designing forty-seven of them. The Columbia County Courthouse in Lake City is the only Florida courthouse he designed. It still stands, though greatly altered. Milburn also planned seventeen railroad stations, and twenty-seven school buildings, fourteen of which were at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His firm was also responsible for at least thirty-one office buildings, mostly located in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina; six other commercial buildings, including a department store, an apartment house, and a city hall-jail-engine house, and a civic auditorium; as well as fraternal buildings, such as a Masonic Temple and Elk Lodge. Residential structures were not ignored, but he is known only to have designed sixteen homes, including his own. He submitted a design for the Florida Governor's Mansion in 1905, but it was not selected. He also designed eight churches and four state capitols. Finally, Milburn designed seven hotels, five of which were built.