Ehrick Kensett Rossiter (1854-1941) was in the vanguard of the newly professional practice of architecture in America after the Civil War. 

A member of the first graduating class in the architectural program at Cornell College (in 1876), Rossiter continued to practice for more than 50 years.  He designed more than 350 projects, in a variety of styles, providing homes, schools, libraries, churches, clubs and workplaces for a rapidly expanding America at the turn of the 20^th century.

Born in Paris, Rossiter was the son of Thomas Pritchard Rossiter (1817-1871), a prominent American painter, and Anna Parmly Rossiter (1830-1856), the daughter of a wealthy New York dentist and real estate developer.  Rossiter’s early years were spent in a stylish New York City townhouse designed by Richard Morris Hunt, and later in the family home along the Hudson River in Cold Spring, New York.  Ehrick was sent to The Gunnery School in Washington, Connecticut, in 1865, where he absorbed the abolitionist principals of the school’s founder and a deep love of the region that would become his country retreat later in life, and a center of some of his most successful architectural work throughout his career.

Rossiter opened his office in New York City and formed a partnership with Frank A. Wright (1854-1949) in 1879. Over the next 30 years (the partnership was dissolved in 1910), they designed hundreds of projects in suburban New Jersey, northwest Connecticut, suburban New York and Manhattan.  Notable among these projects were the Water Witch Club in Monmouth Hills, NJ (1896-); the Village Hall in South Orange, NJ (1894); the Hackensack Public Library, Hackensack, NJ (1900); and the Royalton Hotel in New York City (1897), as well as town houses on the Upper West Side (1886) and cooperative apartments on the Upper East Side (1907); the President’s House at Vassar College (1895); a cluster of 40 country houses and civic buildings in Washington, CT (1882-1910); seventeen projects in Norfolk, CT, including the Music Hall now operated by the Yale Summer Music Festival (1898-1931); many campus buildings at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT (1905-1925); and several homes and a church in Litchfield, CT (1888-1922).

Following his retirement from the partnership Rossiter & Wright in 1910, Rossiter formed a new practice with John Muller (1883-1964).  Together, Rossiter & Muller designed seven libraries in upstate New York (1912-1921), commissioned by A. Barton Hepburn, the president of Chase bank in New York; dormitories for Middlebury college in Vermont (1914-1941), the first also commissioned by Hepburn; a resort at Skytop in the Pennsylvania Poconos (1925); and substantial country homes on Long Island and in Connecticut as well as homes in Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut.

Rossiter married Mary Heath (1855-1948) in 1877.  The couple had four children, Frank, Kensett, Edith and Winthrop. While the Rossiters remained residents of New York City throughout their lives, they were devoted to their summer community in Washington, Connecticut.  In 1925, Rossiter established the town’s first land preservation organization, the Steep Rock Association, donating 100 acres of scenic land he had purchased along the river 40 years earlier.