(b Brookline, MA, 19 Aug 1859; d New York, 27 March 1931). American architect. He spent one year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before enrolling in the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, in 1877. He studied there until 1880 and was awarded a degree in 1881. Cobb worked first for the Boston architectural firm of Peabody & Stearns. Having won the competition of 1881 to design a building for the Union Club in Chicago, Cobb moved to the city in 1882 and began an association with Charles Sumner Frost (1856–1931), who had also worked for Peabody & Stearns. Cobb & Frost’s most notable early commission, a castellated Gothic mansion (1882–3; destr. 1950) for Potter Palmer, led to a number of sizeable residential jobs in Chicago. Cobb’s popularity rested on his willingness to ‘work in styles’, as Montgomery Schuyler observed. The Shingle style was used in the Presbyterian Church (1886), Lake Forest, IL, while Romanesque Revival was favoured for the Dearborn Observatory (1888–9), Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, and the Chicago and Alton Railway Station (1885), Dwight, IL. The two major commercial buildings designed by the partnership are the Opera House (1884–5; destr.), which incorporated offices to support the theatre, and the Owings Buildings (1888; destr.), both Chicago.