Résumé

Draftsman, McKim, Mead and White, Architects, New York, NY, 1883-1885.

Partner, Carrère and [Thomas] Hastings, Architects, New York, NY, 1885-1911. Carrère's name came first in the partnership as he was two years older and had slightly more experience than Hastings. (See Thomas Hastings, "John Merven Carrere," New York Architect, vol. V, no. 53, 05/1911, p. 65.)

College

Dipl, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France, 1882. He studied in the atelier of Leon Ginian.

Relocation

Born of French, Socttish and Brazilian ancestry in 1858, Carrère had a worldly upbringing, having been born in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, and raised in Baltimore, MD. His father and mother's family were in the coffee business in Brazil. He received a secondary school education in Lausanne, Switzerland, and at the Swiss boarding school, the Breidenstein Institute in Grenchen, and studied at the premier architecture school of the time, the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France.

Carrère settled in New York City in 10/1883, and with an impressive and unusual résumé, obtained works as a draftsman with the leading firm in the country, McKim, Mead, and White, for whom he worked until 1885. He opened his own, highly successful firm with Thomas Hastings (1860-1929) in 1885. New York-based Carrère and Hastings received large-scale commissions around the US, becoming one of the most admired Beaux-Arts architectural firms of the period. Carrère died on the first of March, 1911, when the taxicab in which he was riding swerved to avoid an oncoming streetcar at the corner of Madison Avenue and 74th Street in New York City. The architect was thrown 30 feet from the cab and sustained severe head injuries. Carrère was on his way home following a dinner with another well-known architect, Donn Barber (1871–1925), who heard the crash and rushed to the scene. He passed away 17 days after the accident. (See "J.M. Carrere Hurt in Taxicab Crash," New York Times, 02/13/1911, p. 1.)

After 1901, he resided on East 68th Street in New York City, and maintained a country estate in Harrison, NY in Westchester County.

He passed away in 1911.

Spouse

Just after setting up his own architectural firm, he married Marion Dell in 1886.

Children

Carrère had three daughters with Marion, one of whom died early in life.

• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Architect's Birth)
  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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• New York, NY (Architect's Death)
  New York, NY

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  Carrere died in a taxi cab accident;

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