Mayor of Madison and “Father of the Skyscraper”

By Doug Simon

            For two years, 1920-1922, William Aiken Starrett, Jr. served as Mayor of the Borough of Madison.  He and his wife Eloise, his daughter Helen Ruth, and his son, David, lived in a five-bedroom Tudor home in Madison. That was one side of Starrett’s life. The other side was his enormous body of work as an architect and builder with his crowning achievement being the construction of the Empire State Building, at the time the tallest building in the world.

            William A. Starrett, Jr. was born in Lawrence, Kansas in 1877.  Early in his life the family moved to Chicago.  His father, William A. Starrett Sr. was a minister.  His mother, Helen Martha Starrett, was an author of many books and founder of the Starrett School for Girls in Chicago. In 1893, he entered the University of Michigan.  But before he could finish, he had to drop out and help his family that was financially strapped. In 1917, Michigan retroactively awarded Starrett his Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering.

When he was forced to leave the University of Michigan, he almost immediately entered the construction business beginning his career with the George A. Fuller Company in 1898 as an office boy. The Fuller Company billed itself as the largest construction company in the world and was responsible for a number of high profile projects including the Flatiron Building, Penn Station, the Wall Street Exchange, National City Bank and Plaza Hotel, all in New York City.

            William left the Fuller Company in 1901 joining two of his brothers at the Starrett, Thompson Company, becoming vice-president between 1910 and 1912. One of the major accomplishments of the company was the construction of the Woolworth Building in New York City. In 1913 he sold out his share of the company and joined his brother Goldwin at Starrett & Van Vlecky, architects of skyscraper department stores. In 1922 he became president of the umbrella Starrett Corporation and held that position for the remainder of his life.

    Starrett made a significant contribution to the American effort during WWI. Just before the war broke out he entered army training and was commissioned with a rank of Major and ended up supervising all U.S. government war construction as Chairman of the Emergency Construction Committee of the Council of National Defense. Eventually he achieved the rank of Full Colonel and was discharged in 1919.

            That same year he traveled to Japan to explore setting up a business constructing buildings.  In order to do this a number of critical problems had to be overcome including designing foundations to withstand earthquakes and the transporting of large heavy materials over Japan’s narrow and underdeveloped road system.  Starrett overcame these and other challenges and under his leadership a number of significant structures were built including the Nippon Oil Company Building, the Nippon Yusen Kaisa (Japanese Mail Steamship Co.), Mitsubishi Bank Co. and the Crescent Building in Kobe.  Perhaps Starrett’s greatest contribution to Japan was introducing western steel construction technology to the building of large structures.

                 In the 1920s and 30s the Starrett Brothers companies became known for their large-scale construction projects, particularly skyscrapers. The New York Life Insurance Company Building, the McGraw-Hill Building were two notable examples.  But the jewel in the crown of Starrett structures was, of course, the Empire State Building. Work on the building began in the early years of the Great Depression.  The project employed upward of 3,400 workers on any single day.  Many were immigrants from Europe.  Of particular note were hundreds of Mohawk Indian iron workers.  The project took twenty months to complete from the first architectural drawings in September of 1929 to the building’s opening on May 1, 1931. The final cost was $40,948,900. Today that would amount to $691,710,455.

            William Aiken Starrett, Jr. passed away on March 26, 1932 at his home in Madison after suffering a series of apoplectic strokes. To this day he is remembered in architectural and construction circles as  “Father of the Skyscraper.”