S. Scott Joy

Samuel Scott Joy (born 1875 in Delaware, Ohio; died 1942 in Orlando, Florida) was a civil engineer and architect active in Birmingham in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Joy was the son of attorney Frederick Merrick Joy and Hattie Hitchcock. He and his brothers Tom and Todd, who were both engineers, moved to Birmingham with their parents in the late 19th century. He returned to the midwest to study engineering at the University of Illinois and graduated there in 1901. He returned to Birmingham by 1903 and worked alongside his brothers as a civil engineer for the firm of Messrs Joy. In 1906 he joined the architectural firm of Wheelock & Wheelock, founded in the 1880s by Charles Wheelock and his son, Harry.

Joy rose within the firm and, for several years it did business as Wheelock, Joy & Wheelock. At the same time he continued to design houses, mainly for members of his successful family and their friends, clustered in Forest Park. His residential designs reveal an influence of Frank Lloyd Wright not present in his more traditionally-styled institutional buildings.

Joy and his brother Tom founded the Joy Construction Company in 1910. They designed and constructed the YMCA Building on 20th Street North in 1912 but found few other projects. With scant prospects remaining in Birmingham, Joy moved to Chicago and became the primary architect for the Chicago Manufacturing District, an early prototype for an industrial park. He designed numerous large buildings there, perhaps the most expressive of which is the Power House and Clock Tower of 1917. Joy was succeeded as the architect of the district by engineer and former employee, Abraham Epstein in 1921]. Two of Joy's other associates, William H. P. Owen and Joseph Brandstetter, resigned to join Epstein's firm.

Joy partnered with another architect in the firm of Gallup & Joy which designed the Ritz Theater and the Spanish Renaissance-style Admiral Theater in Chicago and Birmingham's LaSalle Apartments on 11th Avenue South.

Joy's later years apparently signaled personal and professional decline. The depression years were particularly dry for architects. He died in Orlando, Florida in 1942.

Notable works

Birmingham

See also: Wheelock & Wheelock.

• S. Scott Joy residence, 4141 Crescent Road, c. 1904
• Edmund Penruddocke residence, 2317 Arlington Avenue, c. 1906 (attributed)
• Hattie Hitchcock Joy residence, 4011 Clairmont Avenue, 1911 (later joined with the Todd Joy residence)
• Todd Joy residence, 900 42nd Street South (later joined with the Hattie Joy residence)
• Frederick Joy residence (1910), 1933 16th Avenue South, c. 1910
• 20th Street YMCA, architect and builder, 1912
• Frederick Joy residence (1922), 4215 Glenwood Avenue, 1922
• Hawthorne residence, 4001 Clairmont Avenue (attributed)
• Brown-Lowe residence, 4007 Clairmont Avenue
• LaSalle Apartments, 1926 (with Harold Gallup)

Other

• Chicago Manufacturing District
  • Warehouses, Pershing Road from Paulina Street to Western Avenue, 1912-1922
  • Starck Piano Factory, 1913
  • Union Bag and Paper Co. Building, 1915
  • American Ever Ready Building, 1916
  • Central Bag Co. Building, 1916
  • Central Manufacturing District Power House/Clock Tower, 1917
  • White City Storage Shipping Platform, 1917
  • U. S. Quartermasters Depot, 1918
  • City Furniture Co. Building, 1919
  • Calumet Refining Co. Building, 1919
  • Edgar T. Ward's Sons Co. Warehouse, 1919
  • Fairbanks Morse Co. Building, 1919
  • Pullman Coach Co. Building, 1919
  • Thompson's Restaurant, 1919
  • American Glue Co. Building, 1920
  • Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Building, 1920
  • Pullman Car Co. Building, 1920
  • Central Manufacturing District Lunchroom, 1923
  • Blue Valley Creamery Co., 1924
  • Kellogg-Mackay Mercantile Building, 1924
  • Mack Truck Factory and Sales Room, 1925
• Westinghouse Electric Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1922
• Kansas City Cold Storage Co. Building, Kansas City, Missouri, 1922
• Ritz Theater, northwest corner of Harding & Lawrence Avenues, Chicago, Illinois, 1924
• Admiral Theater, 3940 W. Lawrence Avenue, Chicago, Illinois, 1927
• Pere Marquette Building, New Orleans, 1925 (with Charles L. Franck and William E. Spink)

Publications

• Wheelock, Charles, S. Scott Joy, and Harry B. Wheelock (1905) Wheelock, Joy, & Wheelock, Architectural Works. St Louis, Missouri: Murbell & Co.
• Joy, S. Scott (April & May 1921) "The Central Manufacturing District, Chicago, Illinois." Architectural Forum 34.

References

• Browne, Catherine Greene (1992) The History of Forest Park. Birmingham: A. H. Cather Publishing Company