Résumé

Draftsman, Henry Hobson Richardson, Architect, Boston, MA.

Partner, Heins and La Farge, Architects, New York, NY, 1886-1907; within the firm of Heins and La Farge, Heins handled much of the construction supervision, while La Farge focused on design. The Seattle city directory of 1905 listed the firm as "Heins, LaFarge and W.M. Somervell." (See L.R. Stradley and Company's Seattle Business Directory, 1905, p. 7.)

State Architect, State of New York, Albany, NY, 1899- . The Lehman College web site stated of the architect: "Heins, one of the best-known architects in the United States, was appointed New York State Architect by governor Theodore Roosevelt in 1899, and designed interiors for the first buildings at the State University of New York. (See Lehman College.edu, "Heins & LaFarge," accesed 01/31/2020.) A contemporary report in the Engineering Record said of Heins's appointment: "Mr. George Lewis Heins has been appointed State Capitol Commissioner of New York, to succeed Mr. Isaac G. Perry. The position is an onerous one, calling for supervision of all the hospitals, armories, reformatories and other State buildings, and the fact that Governor Roosevelt has persuaded an architect having so large a practice as Mr. Heins to accept it is noteworthy. The new appointee was born in Philadelphia, and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating from the latter school in 1882, he was engaged in architectural offices in St. Paul and Minneapolis. In St. Paul, he joined Mr. C. Grant La Darge, but in a short time the firm moved its offices to New York. Its best known professional achievement is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, now in course of construction in New York." (See "Personal and Obituary Notes," Engineering Record, vol. 39, no. 11, 02/11/1899, p. 242.)

Professional Awards

Fellow, American Institute of Architects (FAIA).

Archives

A large number of drawings by Heins and La Farge have been deposited at the Princeton University Library, Special Collections.Manuscripts Division, Princeton, NJ, Collection #C0688. This collection contained: "...approximately 5000 early 20th-century American architectural drawings (blueprint and trace drawings), primarily by C. Grant La Farge and various firms with which he was associated, including Heins & La Farge, La Farge, Clark & Creighton, La Farge, Warren & Clark, La Farge & Morris, and La Farge & Son. There are also groups of drawings by the architects Wilson Eyre, Pennington Satterthwaite (Princeton Class of 1893), Robert Gibson, and a few miscellaneous firms." (See University of Pennsylvania, "Philadelphia Area Archives Research Portal (PAARP): Collection C0688," accessed 01/31/2020.)

College

Coursework, University of Pennsylvania (Penn), Philadelphia, PA.

B.S., Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, 1882.

Relocation

Heins died at age 47 unexpectedly at Mohegan Lake, Westchester County, NY, and was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY.

Biographical Notes

Heins's middle name was the German, "Ludwig," anglicized to "Lewis."

The useful web site Find a Grave.com listed his birthdate erroneously as 05/04/1860 as of 01/31/2020.