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. His parents his brothers Tom and Frederick ("Tedd"), who were both engineers, moved to Birmingham with their parents in the early 1900s. He remained to the midwest to study engineering and architecture at the University of Illinois, where he pledged Sigma Chi and graduated 1901. He joined his family in Birmingham before 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 and added Jacob Salie to the firm. On March 6, 1910 Joy's automobile rolled off the edge of the cliff at Bluff Park while he was outside cranking it. The car was totaled, but no one was injured.

With scant prospects 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 (1904), 4141 Crescent Road, c. 1904
• James Harwell residence, 5 Glen Iris Park, 1906
• Edmund Penruddocke residence, 2317 Arlington Avenue, c. 1906 (attributed)
• Hattie Hitchcock Joy residence, 4011 Clairmont Avenue, 1911 (later joined with the adjacent Frederick Joy residence)
• Sentinel Apartments, 1913
• Frederick Joy residence (42nd Street), 900 42nd Street South (later joined with the adjacent Hattie Joy residence)
• Frederick Joy residence (10th Avenue South), 2800 10th Avenue South
• Frederick Joy residence (1910), 1933 16th Avenue South, c. 1910
• Tom Joy residence, southeast corner of Highland Avenue and Waucoma Street (28th Street South)
• S. Scott Joy residence (11th Avenue South), northeast corner of Eula Street (21st Place South) and Rose Avenue (11th Avenue South)
• 20th Street YMCA, architect and builder, 1912
• Frederick Joy residence (1922), 4215 Glenwood Avenue, 1922
• G. Houston Davis residence, 3219 Glen Avenue
• Ed Warren residence, southeast corner of Cliff Road and Whitaker Street
• Hawthorne residence, 4001 Clairmont Avenue (attributed)
• Oscar Hundley residence (first), Niazuma Avenue
• Oscar Hundley residence (second), Niazuma Avenue
• Sterling Lanier residence, Pawnee Avenue
• Brown-Lowe residence, 4007 Clairmont Avenue
• LaSalle Apartment Hotel, 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

• Joy, S. Scott (April & May 1921) "The Central Manufacturing District, Chicago, Illinois." Architectural Forum 34.

References

• Wheelock, Charles, S. Scott Joy, and Harry B. Wheelock (1905) Wheelock, Joy, & Wheelock, Architectural Works St Louis, Missouri: Murbell & Co.
• "Joy's Automobile Totally Wrecked" (March 7, 1910) The Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 5
• "S. Scott Joy" typescript (August 3, 1950), in "Architects & Architecture", Vol. 2 of material compiled by Hill Ferguson for the cornerstone vault in Birmingham City Hall
• Browne, Catherine Greene (1992) The History of Forest Park. Birmingham: A. H. Cather Publishing Company