Personal Data

Allen Howard Cox was born on March 14, 1873, in Massachusetts, son of Gardner Cox and his wife, Emma Howard.

He married on July 23, 1904, to Katherine Gilbert Abbot (b. 1864; d. 1936).

Allen Cox died on July 5, 1944, in Granby, Massachusetts.

Career
Allen Cox attended MIT and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1902, he joined with William Edward Putnam, Jr., in the firm of Putnam and Cox. In about 1939, Nathaniel Saltonstall and Gardner Cox (Allen Cox’s son) joined the partnership, and it became Putnam and Cox and Saltonstall. After Allen Cox’s death in 1944, William Putnam joined with Roger Griswold, Cecil I. Wylde, and Theodore G. Ames in the firm of Putnam, Griswold, Wylde, and Ames. Putnam died in August of 1947.

In 1902, soon after they became partners, Putnam and Cox were the winners of a competition to design a new building for the Boston Athenaeum to be built at the northwest corner of Arlington and Newbury. The Athenaeum subsequently decided to remain on Beacon Street and the proposed building was not built..

Among Putnam and Cox’s works were the Hotel Bellevue, the American Unitarian Association headquarters on Beacon Street, the Kirstein Business Branch of the Boston Public Library, Angell Memorial Animal Hospital, and a number of fraternity buildings at Amherst College and Mt. Holyoke College.

Back Bay Work