Ross Edward Shumaker (1889-1960) was born in Gladdens, Pennsylvania on January 31, 1889. He received an undergraduate degree in architecture from Ohio State University in 1916 and completed graduate study at Pennsylvania State University and Harvard University. He served as instructor of architecture at Pennsylvania State University in 1916 and 1919 and worked as an architect in Beckley, West Virginia in 1917 and 1918.

Shumaker came to North Carolina State University, then called North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering and popularly referred to as State College, on January 20, 1920, to become professor of architecture in the Engineering Department. At the time, architecture studies at State College fell under the Engineering Department. Shumaker advocated for the creation of a separate department, and in 1923 the college began a degree program in architectural engineering and appointed Shumaker as the head of the Department of Architecture. Popular among the students, Shumaker served as the sole full professor until Jehu DeWitt Paulson joined as second professor in 1926. The two led the department for the next twenty-two years.

Shumaker shaped the curriculum around classical architecture and the Beaux-Arts approach to design. His attention to “exercises in designing” led his students to be highly successful in Beaux-Arts competitions. By the late 1930s, however, he was introducing modernist styles of design and modern materials into his curriculum. Into the mid-1940s, Shumaker continued to head the department, which comprised Paulson, two assistant professors, and six instructors, many of whom were Shumaker’s own graduates. By this time, a division in the department had occurred between architecture and architectural engineering.

This division, coupled with advancements in science and technology and pressure from the National Architectural Accrediting Board pushed State College to modernize its architecture program, and in 1946 the School of Architecture and Landscape Design was established. It opened its doors to students two years later.

Henry Kamphoefner, a forty-one year old modernist architect and professor from the University of Oklahoma, arrived as founding dean in 1948. Kamphoefner, who renamed the program the School of Design, believed the Beaux-Arts approach to be oppressive and outdated and brought to State College a modernist agenda and the plan to replace nearly the entire architectural engineering faculty. Kamphoefner retained Shumaker and one other associate professor, William L. Baumgarten, as faculty, while Paulson and nine others were terminated. During this restructuring, the budget nearly doubled from Shumaker’s proposed $69,000 in 1947 to Kamphoefner’s $108,000 in 1948 to support the new school and faculty. Shumaker continued as a professor until 1956.

In addition to his teaching duties, Shumaker also served as College Architect for many years. He worked in the 1920s on campus projects designed by New York architect Hobart Upjohn and independently designed Morris Hall in 1926. In 1939 he led a $1,600,000 building program sponsored by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). In a four-year flurry of design and building activity, Shumaker with his chief draftsman, Jesse M. Page, drew plans and superintended construction of eight campus buildings: Alexander Hall, Becton Hall, Berry Hall, both with Upjohn, and Turlington Hall, the David Clark Laboratories, Clark Hall, a Dairy Plant and the remodeling of the Diesel Wing of Broughton Hall. He also planned the Tompkins Hall renovation in 1939, the Riddick Field Field House in 1938, and a Laundry Facility in 1940, and saw to the remodeling of the Agriculture Building and the Chancellor’s Residence’s kitchen. Not far from the campus, in 1941 he also designed the Levine Home for Mr. and Mrs. Jack Levine.

For one important project at North Carolina State University—Reynolds Coliseum—some sources have claimed a role for Shumaker in the design, but no primary documentation of the coliseum’s architect or architects has been found. The building was initially conceived in the mid-1930s as a coliseum and armory; a fundraising campaign and WPA funds permitted purchase of the structural steel; and a donation from Mary Reynolds Babcock enabled construction to begin. After a delay because of World War II, the $2 million coliseum was completed in 1949.

Beyond Raleigh, Shumaker also designed campus buildings for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, then called Pembroke State College for Indians, in Pembroke, North Carolina, as well as for University of North Carolina at Asheville. For the small campus at Pembroke, he designed the Library and Administration Building and the Science and Agriculture Building in 1948, the Arts Building in 1949, and the President’s Home in 1950. It is likely that he also designed a gymnasium around the same time, which received additions and renovations in July of 1952. These buildings were most likely replaced during Pembroke’s campus expansion and renovation in the 1970s. In Asheville, he designed a Minerals Research Laboratory in 1945.

Shumaker became professor emeritus of architecture at State College in 1956 and remained active in the profession until his death. He became a member of the North Carolina chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1940 and he served as vice president of the chapter in 1945, president in 1946, executive secretary from 1952 to 1954, and regional director from 1948 to 1951. In 1955 he received the honor for outstanding service to the chapter and became one of six members emeritus in 1957. From 1932 to his death in 1960 he served as an officer and Executive Secretary of the North Carolina Architectural Registration Board and sat on that board. Keenly interested in both the history and the future of architecture, Shumaker was a charter member of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Society of Architectural Examiners. Shumaker died in Raleigh’s Rex Hospital on April 8, 1960 after a lengthy illness. He was survived by his wife Mozelle Shumaker and four daughters.

• Burton F. Beers and Murray Scott Downs, North Carolina State University: A Pictorial History (1986).
• David Louis Sterrett Brook, “Henry Leveke Kamphoefner, the Modernist, Dean of the North Carolina State University School of Design, 1948-1972,” Ed.D. dissertation, North Carolina State University (2005).
• Craig Chappelow, Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum (2002).
• Guide to the Harvey Charlton Papers, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina.
• Department of Administration State Construction Office, Construction Contracts File, North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.
• Historical State: History in Black and White, http://historicalstate.lib.ncsu.edu.
• News and Observer, “Eighth Dormitory Groundbreaking,” Chancellor’s Office, University Archives, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, North Carolina.
• North Carolina State University Archives Reference Collection, UA50.3, Biographical Files, 1889-2009, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina.
• “Ross E. Shumaker, 1889-1960,” The Southern Architect (1960).
• University Buildings, Building Costs, 1956-1990, Compilation of Buildings, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina.