Joseph William Royer (1873-1954) was a prominent architect based in Champaign-Urbana who designed a number of houses and local landmarks including the Historic Urbana Landmark Hotel and Urbana Free Library.

The son of a Maryland miller and an Austrian immigrant, Royer attended Urbana High School and earned a degree in architecture from the University of Illinois College of Engineering in 1895. Just two years after graduating, Royer designed his first house at Lincoln Avenue and West Illinois Street. He then began a spree of house design in Urbana, including 507, 811, and 910 West Illinois Street, 707 South Market Street, and 208 South Grove Street.

From 1898 to 1906, Royer served as Urbana's city engineer, and designed or contributed to the design of many local landmarks, including the new Champaign County Courthouse, completed in 1901, the First Presbyterian Church at 602 West Green Street, ca. 1902, the Freeman House at 504 West Elm Street, ca. 1903, and the Champaign County Jail Building, ca. 1904. In 1906, around the end of his tenure as city engineer, Royer's Flatiron Building rose to dominate the Urbana "skyline" at four stories high. An answer to New York's Flatiron Building, designed by Chicago's Daniel Burnham and finished just four years early, the Champaign County Gazette reported that "[e]xcept for the number of stories, it will be an exact counterpart of its namesake in New York City." In 1948, Urbana's ode to the Big Apple burned down.

Joseph William Royer's Designs Around Town:

Find a more detailed biography here on the City of Urbana's website.

Bibliography

Adams, Brian. Joseph William Royer: Urbana's Architect. Champaign: The News-Gazette, Inc., 2011.