Samuel Sloan

Architect, born in Beaver Dam, Pennsylvania, USA. Called ‘The Architect of Philadelphia’, he designed public buildings, schools, and churches, and, working with Thomas S Kirkbride, became an authority on designing insane asylums. He wrote seven influential plan books (1852–73).

Samuel Sloan was a leading Philadelphia-based architect and writer of architecture books in the mid-19th century.

Born in Chester County, PA, Sloan trained as a carpenter and came to Philadelphia in the mid-1830s. In 1851, Sloan won a commission for the Delaware County, PA, courthouse and jail and designed Andrew Eastwick’s villa near the site of Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia.

Sloan became a prolific author on architecture most notably for The Model Architect as well as City and Suburban Architecture and Sloan's Constructive Architecture (1859). Sloan also reached thousands of potential customers through the pages of Godey's Lady's Book which began publishing his designs in 1852.

Economic downturns in the late 1850’s as well as the American Civil War put a halt to his professional success and Sloan briefly left Philadelphia for New York in 1867.