William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928)

He was the business arm in the celebrated architectural firm, McKim, Mead & White that put up so many of the Gilded Age mansions and civic buildings. The firm's domestic commissions were usually undertaken by Stanford White, but in 1893 Mead personally designed Woodlea for his sister's brother-in-law. Another of his sisters was married to the prolific Gilded Age author, William Dean Howells, and he was a younger brother of the sculptor, Larkin Goldsmith Mead. He was later President of the American Academy in Rome. He died without children and his widow bequeathed their fortune to Amherst College where it was used to build the Mead Art Building.