George Frederick Pelham (1867 – February 7, 1937) was a Canadian-American architect and the son of George Brown Pelham, who was also an architect.
Pelham was born in Ottawa, Ontario, coming to New York City when his father opened an architectural office there in 1875. The elder Pelham designed for the city's Department of Public Parks, and employed his son as a draftsman in his firm.
The first building architected by George F. Pelham was NB 880-1889, at 200 West 99th Street, a 5-story brick and stone flat, 25ÃÂ89, tin roof, built for Martin J. Barron.
After being privately tutored in architecture, the younger Pelham opened his own office in 1890, specializing in apartment houses and hotels, row houses, and commercial buildings and utilizing the Renaissance Revival, Gothic Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Colonial Revival styles. His work is particularly represented on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He designed buildings for 43 years;. Over his career, George F. Pelham designed at least 1245 buildings in New York City per the Office for Metropolitan History, founded by Christopher Gray (architectural historian).
George F. Pelham at one time provided typical drawings for tenements (24 apartments on 6 floors, on a lot 25-feet wide) for $25 a set.
In 1905, he designed the Riverdale apartment building at 67 Riverside Drive for developer John Louis Miller. It opened on October 31, 1907. In 1905 he also designed a new synagogue building for Brooklyn's Beth Jacob Anshe Sholom, based on Arnold Brunner's West Side Synagogue building on Manhattan's West 88th Street. The synagogue is no longer extant.
Pelham was the architect of the Chalfonte Hotel at 200 West 70th Street in Manhattan. Built in 1927, it was later converted to rental apartments and is still standing today.
There are three buildings designed by George F. Pelham in the Sutton Place neighborhood, all located on East 58th Street: 444 East 58th Street, 422 East 58th Street, and Stonehenge 58 (400 East 58th Street).
For many years, his office was at 200 West 72nd Street, originally built as a clubhouse for the Colonial Club of New-York. Pelham, like Rosario Candela, chose that address because a number of developers had their offices there, including Paterno & Son and Anthony Campagna.
The last building architected by George F. Pelham was NB 66-1931, at 1082-1084 Amsterdam Avenue, a 19-story and penthouse apartment, 50ÃÂ90, built for St. Johns House, Inc., Herman A. Axelrod, president.
Pelham's son George Fred Pelham Jr. joined the firm in 1910 and continued the family tradition; he was the architect of a number of New York City buildings, such as Castle Village in 1938-1939, 411 West End Avenue in 1937, and 1150 Park Avenue in 1940.
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