Allison & Allison

Allison & Allison was formed in Pittsburgh in 1904 as the partnership of brothers James E. Allison and David C. Allison. James Allison, who had been in independent practice in Pittsburgh since 1893, was the businessman and superintendent of the firm while David Allison, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, was chief designer.

The Allison brothers

James Edward Allison (February 22, 1870 – July 19, 1955) was born in Hookstown, Pennsylvania, to George A. Allison, a farmer, and Sarah Allison, née Nesbit. He had a public school education but did not finish high school. He was trained in architectural drawing at a night school and worked for architects Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge in Pittsburgh and Adler & Sullivan in Chicago before opening an office of his own in 1893.

David Clark Allison (May 14, 1881 – February 21, 1962) had the academic training his brother lacked. He was educated in the Beaux-Arts-oriented architectural program of the University of Pennsylvania and became his brother's partner shortly after his graduation in 1904. He spent the year 1909–10 in Paris studying in the Beaux-Arts atelier of Eugène Duquesne.

In 1910, shortly after David Allison returned from Paris, the brothers decided to move west to Los Angeles, where they would do most of their work. Allison & Allison developed a specialty in the design of public schools and other institutional buildings. Within two years in Los Angeles they had been awarded two major projects which established their reputation: the Santa Monica High School (1912) and the original campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (1914), which became the Los Angeles City College after 1929. Both projects, which have been demolished piecemeal, were sprawling academic complexes in the Mediterranean Revival style thought appropriate to California. During the 1920s they were hired to design several of the buildings for the second and current campus of UCLA, including Royce Hall (1929), modeled on the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan and which has become the symbol of the university. After the death of the university's supervising architect, George W. Kelham, in 1936, the firm was appointed to that role. As supervising architects they had oversight of all construction on the campus; they kept the role until David Allison's retirement. Other works included churches such as the First Baptist Church (1927) and the First Congregational Church (1932), private clubs such as the demolished University Club (1922) and the Friday Morning Club (1923) and public buildings such as the United States Post Office (1932) in Merced.

Later history and successors

James Allison retired in 1942; David Allison retired circa 1947. In 1939 the brothers had admitted their nephew, George B. Allison (1904 – 1977), to the partnership. Like David Allison he was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and had worked for the firm since 1930. In 1944 David and George Allison were joined by U. Floyd Rible (1904 – 1982), a former employee, and renamed the firm Allison & Rible. In 1958 Rodney T. Robinson (1909 – 2002), chief designer, and Raymond Ziegler (1919 – 2015) became partners; the firm was renamed Allison, Rible, Robinson & Ziegler in 1966. In 1969 the firm merged with the Omaha-based Leo A. Daly Co., one of the largest architectural firms in the United States, and initially kept its name and some autonomy. Over the next few years, the three older partners retired, leaving only Ziegler. In 1974 Ziegler withdrew to establish an independent firm and Daly dropped the Allison name.