Henry Walter's known works (by 1991) are St. Peter-in-Chains Roman Catholic Cathedral, SWC Plum and Eighth streets, with portico completed by William Walter; the former Second Presbyterian Church on W. Fourth St.; the Second Baptist Church, on W. Ninth St.; the original Christ Church Episcopal, NS Fourth St., E of Sycamore; the Cincinnati House of Refuge, formerly on the ES of Colerain Ave N of the Cincinnati Work House (also completed by William Walter and his then-partner J.W. Thwaites). The Ohio Mechanics’ Institute Building, SWC Vine and Sixth streets, is sometimes attributed to him, as is the Franklin-Lafayette Bank (confusion arises over the role of Swiss draftsman John Jolasse in the offices of both Henry Walter and Seneca Palmer in this period). Henry Walter also won the original competition for the design of the Ohio State House at Columbus, with which his son among many other architects and even the Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole were later involved.

Most of Walter's known works were Greek Revival, the Presbyterian and Baptist churches being standard attempts to superimpose Wren-like towers on temple-front auditoriums, although the tower of St. Peter-in-Chains (attributed to William Walter by James W. McLaughlin) represents a more adventurous and powerful solution, with a particularly suave series of diminutions upward, including unusual cross-shaped windows (St. Peter's lost its status as Archdiocesan Cathedral to the new St. Monica's by Crowe & Schulte on Clifton Heights 1938-1957, but then regained it after drastic interior renovations and additions, also by Schulte).

Christ Church Episcopal, on the other hand, was an attempt to use English parish church sources (possibly Ecclesiological), suggesting King's Chapel, Cambridge.

He was a partner in Wank, Adams, Slavin, and Assocs., Architects & Engineers, 155 E. 42nd St., N.Y. He lectured at Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard universities, held an honorary D.F.A. from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and contributed articles to technical journals. F.A.I.A.

Wank was one of the lead architects (and engineers and/or planners) in the planning and execution of Greenhills, the mid-1930s "green-belt" community developed by the WPA (or PWA) north of downtown Cincinnati.

Moffett: “Roland Wank is one of the lesser known architects of the Modern Movement because so much of his professional life was spent in large offices where individual contributions were often not recognized publicly [such semi-anonymous team-work or collaboration being one of the stated goals of Modernism, of course]. Nevertheless,

he has been hailed by Reyner Banham as one of the most consequential American practitioners in the International Style, and he is justifiably celebrated for the powerful modernist expression he contributed to the dams and powerhouses constructed by the TVA from 1933 to 1944. Throughout his career, Wank showed a willingness to cooperate with engineers and landscape architects on large-scale projects that had a strong commitment to social betterment. . . . While in the office of Fellheimer and Wagner, he worked on the Union Terminal in Cincinnati, demonstrating his ability to integrate architectural design with demanding engineering in a very complex project.”

Wank’s significance and characteristics are succinctly described in R.G. Wilson’s essay, “The Machine in the Landscape” The Machine Age in America, 1918-1941 (1986), p. 117-22 and fns 52-61 on p. 355 , with emphasis on his work for TVA but also reference to CUT.

In Pittsfield: the William Russell Allen House (1885; the Allens were also settlers of Glendale, and commissioned at least one residence—a stone “Jacobethan” Villa included in Langsam’s Great Houses of the Queen City [1997]); the W.P. Burbank House (1887); the William C. [Cooper] Procter House (1889); and an unidentified residence (1888; the rendering for Wilson in AA&BN was delineated by “Burton,” perhaps Matthew H. Burton of Cincinnati).

In Lenox are identified the D.W. Bishop House (1888) and “Shadow Brook,” now known as “Shadow Brook Castle” (1893); the latter was commissioned by Anson Phelps Stokes in 1891 at a cost of one million dollars; it burned in 1956 but was rebuilt for the Society of Jesus with lesser quality of construction (see http://www.dupont castle.com/castles/shadowbr.htm).

Also attributed to Wilson is the 1897 rebuilding of the famous Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Mass., established in 1773, repeatedly enlarged and remodeled but burnt on August 31, 1896; it is possible that Wilson had also been responsible for previous additions in 1892 and 1894 (see http://www.redlioninn.com/history/index.html, and Jackson and Gilder).

In Jackson and Gilder’s book on "country cottages" in the Berkshires, there is a fascinating reference by H.N. Wilson to his father, James Keys Wilson. This is one of the extremely rare items that gives some sense of JKW's personality. On p. 153 of Jackson and Gilder, concerning "Shadow Brook," the vast 1894 Anson Phelps and Helen Louisa Phelps Stokes mansion (the largest in America until "Biltmore" was opened slightly over a year later) in Lenox, Mass., which is Shingle Style in all but scale, size (17 "public rooms" on the main floor), and materials, the authors say: "Explaining the meandering layout to the owners' son Anson Phelps Stokes Jr. [sic], [H.N.] Wilson quoted his own architect father [i.e., James K. Wilson of Cincinnati], who preferred to create the effect of an old house that had been added to [rather] than the look of a house that had been built all at once." The source for this anecdote is apparently the unpublished manuscript "Reminiscences" (1956) of Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., cited in a footnote. Frankly, neither "Woodburn," the Baker-Mixter House in East Walnut Hills, nor "Scarlet Oaks" seems to me to have much of that cumulative character, despite their apparently irregular Picturesque massing. But perhaps there are/were other J.K. Wilson residences that are still unknown. Jackson and Gilder’s biographical sketch of H. Neill Wilson also provides some information on when he worked for/with his father; and that of Boston architect J.P. Rinn, who worked on “Scarlet Oaks” (perhaps as a decorative designer) indicates that Rinn was at least associated with Charles Crapsey (misspelled “Cropsey”), as they submitted a joint competition proposal for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and may have worked together in Cincinnati.