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- from "History of Illinois and her people" by George Washington Smith, vol. 4 277-278 (hathitrust.org)
WARREN. W. DAY is one of the skilled and successful registered architects engaged in practice in the city of Peoria, and special interest attaches to his career by reason of his being a native son of the city and a scion of honored pioneer families that were here founded in an early day. Warren W. Day was born in Peoria on the 26th of July, 1882, and is a son of John Wentworth Day and Kate Delaney (Moore) Day, both likewise natives of Peoria, where the former was born August 5, 1856, and the latter on the 16th of January of that same year. Larkin B. Day, grandfather of the subject of this review, was born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, on December 2, 1831, and came to Illinois in the '50s. He established his residence in Peoria, which was then a small city, and here with his brothers Lucius L. and Charles B., he founded the firm of Day Brothers, with which for many years he was associated in the conducting of a substantial and prosperous wholesale and retail dry goods business. His wife, whose maiden name was Caroline Amelia Wentworth, was born at Alstead, New Hampshire, on November 18, 1831, a representative of a sterling New England colonial family. With the exception of a year or so Larkin B. Day and his wife continued their residence in Illinois until their deaths. John Wentworth Day was reared and educated in Peoria, where he early became associated with the business of Day Brothers, being numbered among the representative citizens and business men of his native city. His widow, Mrs. Kate M. Day, who is still a resident of Peoria, is a daughter of William and Maria Amelia (Delaney) Moore, the former of whom was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1809, and the latter of whom was born at Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1833. William Moore was one of the pioneer settlers, and came to Illinois in 1836 and a few years later moved to Peoria, where he established a foundry, one of the first in this section of the state, and where he continued to operate his foundry until the time of his death. Warren W. Day, the only child to attain to adult age, continued his studies in the Peoria public schools until , he had completed his junior year in the high school. He then spent five years in the business world and in foreign travel, after which he entered the University of Illinois, from which institution he was graduated in 1910, with the degree of Bachelor of Science. With excellent technical training for the work of his chosen profession Mr. Day was early privileged to gain practical experience of valuable order, for after leaving the University he was for one season retained as superintendent of construction in connection with Illinois state work. He then made another extended trip abroad, and upon his return he engaged in the practice of his profession in his native city of Peoria, where his success stands in evidence of both his technical and artistic ability and his personal popularity. His prominence in his profession is attested in his being (1924) president of the Central Illinois Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. His political allegiance is given to the republican party, and he and his wife hold membership in the Congregational Church. In the Masonic fraternity he is affiliated with the Scottish Rite body and also the Mystic Shrine. He is a member of the Theta Delta Chi college fraternity, the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, the National Society of Scabbard and Blade, the International Optimist Club, the Theta Delta Chi Club of New York City, the University Club of Peoria, the Art Institute of Peoria, the Illinois Valley Yacht and Canoe Club, the Peoria Illini Club, the Peoria Association of Commerce, the Illinois Society of Architects, and the American Institute of Architects, and he has the brevet rank of captain in the Illinois National Guard. In the World war he served in France as a Directeur in Les Foyers du Soldat of the French Army. He has made five trips abroad, and as a keen observer has greatly broadened his intellectual ken through this medium, besides having further fortified himself for the work of his profession. On September 7, 1910, Mr. Day was united in marriage to Miss Ethel Annetta Hollister, also a graduate in 1910 of the University of Illinois, who was born at Bellevue, Iowa, on August 21, 1888, and whose father, Professor Horace A. Hollister, occupies the professorship of education in the University of Illinois. The honeymoon of Mr. and Mrs. Day was passed in a seven months trip around the world. Both are popular factors in the social and cultural circles of their home city, Mrs. Day being a member of the Peoria Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Peoria Woman's Club, the Art Institute of Peoria, and the College Woman?s Club of Peoria, of which latter she is a past president. They have two daughters: Shirley Wentworth and Muriel Hollister.
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