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For other persons of the same name please see Robert Mills (disambiguation).

Robert Mills
Robert Mills
Born	August 12, 1781 Charleston, South Carolina
Died	March 3, 1855 Washington D.C.
Nationality	U.S.
Occupation	Architect
Spouse	Eliza Barnwell Smith
Parents	William Mills & Ann Taylor

Robert Mills (August 12, 1781; Charleston, South Carolina - March 3rd 1855; Washington D.C.) is sometimes called the first native born American to become a professional architect, though Charles Bulfinch perhaps has a clearer claim to this honor. Mills studied in Charleston, South Carolina, as a student of Irish-born architect James Hoban, who later designed the White House, which became the official home of US presidents. Both Hoban and Mills were Freemasons.

Statistics of South Carolina.^[1][2]

In 1836 he won the competition for the design of the Washington Monument, his best known work.

Robert Mills' proposed design for the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

He also designed the [[to include fireproof materials. A fire in Kingstree, South Carolina destroyed much of the upper floor of a courthouse called the Fireproof Building that he designed, but the county records on the first floor were protected due to his fireproofing measures.

He died in Washington, D.C. in 1855 and was buried at the Congressional Cemetery.

The broadest context for Mills' architecture was neoclassical architecture. This was the dominant style of building that was winning architectural design competitions and major projects of the time, both in Europe and in America. Under the umbrella of neoclassicism, his designs were partly Palladian, Georgian and often Greek Revival.

Apart from stylistic movements in architecture going on in the world at his time, Robert Mills was involved in the more local context of building in the Mid-Atlantic States. There, and especially in Washington D.C., were many figures contributing architecture of high quality. To build, as Mills did, on what is now the National Mall he had to contend with the planning strictures of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, as well as Andrew and Joseph Ellicott]. Being an architect of the now Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area he was also undoubtedly influenced by Thomas Jefferson and Jeffersonian architecture. Mills, with Jefferson and others, was able to create a distinctive federal style of architecture.

1. ^ Mills, Robert, Statistics of South Carolina, Reprint Company, Spartanburg, SC, 1972 reprint, ISBN 0-87152-098-2.
2. ^ Edgar, Walter, ed. The South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 637-638, ISBN 1-57003-598-2

• Robert Mills: America's First Architect, by John Bryan, Princeton Architectural Press.