Charles Delevan Wetmore (1866-1941) was an attorney and financier who partnered with architect Whitney Warren to create Gilded Age homes and buildings.
Wetmore was elected to The Lambs in 1897, in an era where scores of socially-prominent artists and architects joined the Club as Non-Professional (today classified as Patrons) members.
Wetmore was born in Elmira, New York. He graduated from Harvard University (1889) and Harvard Law School (1892). He also took an interest in architecture and designed three dormitory buildings at the Harvard Law School campus before deciding on a legal career. In the late 1890s, he commissioned McKim, Mead & White (all three Lambs) to build his country home and the task of drawing up the plans fell to the socially prominent Whitney Warren, recently returned from ten years of study in Paris. Warren was also a cousin of the Vanderbilt family.
Warren was so impressed by his client’s architectural ability that he persuaded Wetmore to leave his law firm and they established Warren & Wetmore in 1898. Warren was the principal designer of the firm and used his social connections to provide them with clients while Wetmore became the firm’s legal and financial specialist. Warren & Wetmore went on to become one of the most important architectural firms during the Gilded Age. The firm’s most important work by far is the construction of Grand Central Terminal, completed in 1913 in association with Reed and Stem.
Warren & Wetmore also designed the New York Yacht Club (1899), Helmsley Building (originally the New York Central Building, 1929), the Newport, RI, Country Club (1895), and the chapel at Green-Wood Cemetery (1911).
In 1917, Wetmore married Sara Dayton Thomson, and they had at least one son. Wetmore died in 1941.