William L. Price (1861-1916) was one of an influential group of architects working during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Philadelphia. Aside from his importance in the area of design based on Arts and Crafts Movement ideals, Price was one of the founders of an arts and crafts community, Rose Valley, outside of Philadelphia. He attended the Westtown School, but left in 1877 to practice carpentry, abandoning that for architecture when he entered the office of Quaker architect Addison Hutton in 1878. According to the obituary published by the Philadelphia Real Estate Record and Builders Guide, Price also spent some time with Furness & Evans; however, that information has not been documented by other sources. By 1881 Price and his brother Frank L. Price had established a partnership which would last until 1895, with a practice chiefly based on residential design, including houses for Wendell & Smith, the developers of Wayne and St.Davids, PA, as well as the Pelham and Overbrook neighborhoods of Philadelphia. In 1895 Price began to practice independently, but in 1903 he established a partnership with M. Hawley McLanahan which would endure under the name of Price & McLanahan until his death, with McLanahan continuing to use the name for several years thereafter and eventually producing a successor firm, McLanahan & Bencker. Although well-known for residential design, Price's work also included the Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ, and Jacob Reed's Sons store in Philadelphia. As interested in social reform movements as he was in architecture, Price helped Frank Stephens to found Arden, DE, a single-tax community outside of Wilmington. In 1901 he helped establish Rose Valley, an arts and crafts community in which many architects were involved, but none so vitally as Price. Although the earlier parts of the community were based on existing buildings, Price later designed a number of residences, among those several for the Rose Valley Improvement Company. Price was joined in the Rose Valley endeavor by his brother Walter Price and Walter Price's partner, William McKee Walton, as well as by younger architects like Carl deMoll and John M. Dickey.

Somewhat overshadowed by his well-known brother William L. Price, Walter F. Price (1857-1951), also brother to architect Frank L., nonetheless established himself as an authority on the design and restoration of Friends' meetinghouses and contributed a number of buildings to college campuses on the east coast. Price attended Westtown School and Friends' Select School and graduated from Haverford College in classical studies in 1881, receiving his master's degree from Harvard in 1884. For nearly 10 years he was associated with his brothers in their architectural endeavors, but by 1902 had launched his own practice with work on the Haverford College campus, combined with speculative housing design for the developer Milton W. Young, chiefly in the Overbrook area of Philadelphia. From 1923 to around 1935, he worked in a partnership with William McKee Walton under the name Price & Walton. Price joined the T-Square Club in 1892 and was a member of the AIA. Other memberships included the Friends' Historical Society and the Welsh Society. Price was also one of the founders of the Haverford School, in which he taught for a time. Throughout most of his career in Philadelphia, Price resided in Moylan, PA



Written by Sandra L. Tatman.