This is not a Wikipedia article: It is an individual user's work-in-progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable. For guidance on developing this draft, see Wikipedia:So you made a userspace draft. Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Austin W. Mather FAIA (1904–1994) was an American architect in practice in Bridgeport, Connecticut from 1939 until the 1980s.
Austin Wheeler Mather was born December 13, 1904 in Norwalk, Connecticut to Harry Wakefield Mather and Maude (Wheeler) Mather. He was educated at the Pratt Institute (Pratt) in Brooklyn, graduating in 1927, with further instruction at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design. He worked as a drafter for architects Lee & Hewitt and Starrett & van Vleck until 1931, when he returned to Connecticut. He taught at Pratt from 1927 to 1928, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1937 to 1938 and again at Pratt from 1938 to 1940. In between these teaching engagements he worked with his former Pratt classmate, Thomas J. Lyons, in his office in Bridgeport, and in 1939 they formed a partnership, Lyons & Mather. During World War II, from 1941 to 1944, Mather served on the ordnance staff of the United States Army. With the exception of another period of teaching at the University of Bridgeport from 1946 to 1948, Mather focused on the practice of architecture for the rest of his career.
Lyons & Mather developed a practice based chiefly on the design of schools and other institutional projects. In 1952 they formed an association with New London architect H. Eugene Grieshaber to open a branch office in that city, and the local office of Lyons, Mather & Grieshaber was active until Grieshaber's death in 1960. In 1966 the firm admitted George J. Lechner, an employee since 1955, as a junior partner. In 1969 he became an equal partner and the firm was renamed Lyons, Mather & Lechner. In 1970 an office was established in Nashua, New Hampshire with Lechner as local partner. Later the main office was moved to Stratford and a third office was established at Wendell, near Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1979 Lyons died, and in 1983 operations were consolidated in the Stratford office.