Francis Keally

Francis J. Keally (1889 - 1978)[1] was an American architect and pioneering preservationist, based in New York City. Keally's design credits include the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon in 1938, in a one-time association with Trowbridge & Livingston; the Former Embassy of Iran in Washington, D.C.; and the main building of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Francis Keally c. 1924

Keally was born in Pittsburgh,[1] and first trained in architecture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912, then moving to the University of Pennsylvania.[2] Twelve pages of his travel sketches from two years in Europe were published in Pencil Points of June 1928, raising his professional profile.[3]

Keally's first major commission was won in a national competition with 75 entries—a federally-funded monument to the First Permanent Settlement of the West, erected in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, in what was then Pioneer Memorial State Park. Keally's partner in the competition entry was the architectural sculptor Ulric Ellerhusen. Three years later the same team of Keally and Ellerhusen won the national competition for the Oregon State Capitol, with Keally aligning himself with the larger New York firm of Trowbridge & Livingston.

Later he would partner with Alfred Morton Githens. Keally also taught at Columbia University and the University of Minnesota,[2] and served as president of the Municipal Art Society of New York. He became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1948.[4]