John W. Reid, Jr., Architect [1879-1868]
John W. Reid, Jr. [†] was born in San Francisco and educated at U. C. Berkeley and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. When Reid returned to San Francisco from Paris he joined the firm of D. H. Burnham and Co., where he worked as a designer for the very distinguished architect, Willis Polk. Reid was the consulting architect for the San Francisco Civic Center. Reid, in conjunction with the Beaux Arts trained John Galen Howard, assisted in the creation of a very impressive set of Neoclassical buildings in the grand Beaux Arts tradition.
Reid subsequently established his own office in which he was largely occupied with the design of institutional buildings for the city. He was city architect from 1918-1930. Some of his most memorable accomplishments are the designs for San Francisco schools.
His critic, fellow architect William F. Morrow, commented, "Mr. Reid has done schools as modern as the best, but he has not failed to take account of the human aspect of his problem as well."
† Margaret Brentano, Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, Phi Delta Theta Chapter House, Alameda County, California, nomination document, 1981, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.