Robert A. Welcke (November 24, 1848 - January 27, 1936) was a photolithographer active in New York in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century. Welcke was born in Wronke, today in Poland, but then part of Prussia. He emigrated to New York City in 1869. After settling, Welcke went into the lithography business with his brother, Edward Welcke, who arrived a decade earlier. After a split between the brothers during the economic depression of the late 1870s, Robert Welcke continued in business on his own. Welcke's firm, Robert A. Welcke Offset Company, was based at 176 William Street. His corpus ranges from real estate maps of New York and Connecticut to illustrations on Flemish Renaissance interiors to government maps and brochures to decorative sheet music covers. Following Welcke's death, the firm was taken over by his daughter, Olga Welcke, who, alongside William Jugens, managed it until the outbreak of World War II (1939 - 1945). More by this mapmaker...

William W. Klein (February 9, 1868 - ?) was a German - American civil engineer and surveyor living and working in The Bronx. He was born in Mündelheim, Germany; he joined the cadet corps at 13, was a sergeant by 1887 and rose to the position of Lieutenant in 1890 - though he apppears to have at least visited New York as early as 1889. In any case, he was granted leave in 1897 (Verabschiedet) returning to the United States in 1897 at the age of 29. Klein appears to have begun work as a surveyor and civil engineer right away, working for some years in conjunction with printer Robert Welcke on several maps of the Bronx and New York City overall. In 1906 he was appointed City Surveyor. As of 1913 he was a listed member of the Verband Deutscher Schriftsteller in Amerika (Association of German Writers in America.) The beginning of the first world war saw him return to Germany to take up his commission. He served in the ersatz corps in 1914, being promoted to Oberleutnant. He appears to have survived the war: but we see no evidence of his ever returning to America or his family. Learn More...

John Jay McKelvey (May 24 1863 – October 19 1947) was an American author, attorney, and preservationist who set precedents in case law to stave off urban development of his Spuyten Duyvil community in The Bronx. The neighborhood had long been an enclave for the wealthy, and as the city grew around them residents of the neighborhood joined McKelvey in fighting threats to their park residence district. McKelvey used realty buyouts to protectively develop in such way that would save his picturesque tranquility. In the 20s he would bend so far as to develop idyllic garden apartment buildings like his visionary Villa Charlotte Brontë. Critics suggested that McKelvey's vision was driven by profit and oblivious to the needs of a growing city, although his projects also included the development of the Henry Hudson Monument and Edgehill Terraces. Learn More...

Robert Waterman Gardner (1866 - September 7, 1937) was an American architect noted for pioneering the use of reinforced concrete in residential architecture. He studied architecture with Calvert Vaux and Clarence Luce from 1887 to 1891, and was operating on his own as early as 1905. His 1909 partnership with John Jay McKelvey in developing the 'Along-the-Hudson-Park' in Spuyten Duyvil, New York gave him a broad canvas on which to put his design ideas in practice. Many of the single-family homes built there were made to his designs, and the collaboration would continue into the 1920s with the construction of McKelvey's Villa Rosa Bonheur and Villa Charlotte Bronte. He would become president of the New York Society of Craftsmen. Learn More...