Hammon, Stratton O. Photograph Collection, ca. 1930s-1960s.

Held by The Filson Historical Society

Creator: Stratton O. Hammon

Title: The Stratton O. Hammon Photograph Collection, ca. 1930s-1960s.

Rights: For information regarding literary and copyright interest for these papers, contact the Collections Department.

Size of Collection: 275 images & one album

Location Number: 998PC46

Scope and Content Note

Black and white photographs of houses and other buildings designed by Stratton O. Hammon,
Architect. Includes a few color transparencies. For list of addresses of homes and buildings
included in photos, see below.

Item 998PC46.63 is a photograph of Stratton Hammon in front of his home in 1975. This item is
also a Courier-Journal photograph and cannot be reproduced.

Items 998PC46.117 – .127 are photographs of Kentucky doorways.

Item 998PC46.129 is a group photograph with Governor Simeon E. Willis.

Item 998PC46.245 is a photograph of a Stratton O. Hammon exhibit at the J.B. Speed Museum
from February 1931.

Item 998PC46.281 is a wrapped album containing World War II photographs of Bowman Field.

Biographical Note 

Stratton Owen Hammon was born in 1904 in Louisville, Ky. By the age of 18 he was working for the firm M. J. Murphy as a draftsman and learning architecture. He left M. J. Murphy in 1929 to start his own business. His business quickly grew, and he was recognized as a first-class architect not only in the city of Louisville but in national magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, McCall’s Magazine and Good Housekeeping Magazine.
During the Second World War he enlisted as a Captain in the Army Corps of Engineers in the summer of 1942 and was placed in charge of the construction of an airfield in Columbus, Ind. When that job was done, he was then sent to oversee the construction of the airfield at Sturgis, Ky. By spring of 1943 he was promoted to Major and sent to the Regional Office of the Corps of Engineers in Louisville where he was involved in such projects as construction at the Naval Ordinance Plant, Bowman and Standiford Fields, Nichols General Hospital, and Jeffersonville Quartermaster Depot.
Hammon’s army career took a change when he was classified as fit for combat and sent to the University of Virginia to be trained in Military Occupational Government. He was then sent over to England and then to France where he arrived a couple of weeks after D-Day. Hammon then became an officer in the Museum, Fine Arts and Archives Division of the Allied Forces. He worked in France and the Low Countries surveying historical sites for damage and or looting. He eventually was assigned to the SHAEF in Paris before coming home to the United States just before the war ended.
After the war he returned to Louisville and started practicing as an architect. His son Neal joined him to form Hammon and Hammon in the 1950s. They designed many houses as well as doing work for such companies as Reynolds Aluminum and General Box as well as government jobs for Jefferson County, Ky., Jefferson County, Ind., Orange County, Ind., and the Corps of Engineers. Hammon practiced his trade up until his death in 1997.

Photograph List