Architects and Camouflage | Roy C. Jones

Architect and camoufleur Roy C. Jones

Above Portrait photograph of American architect Roy Childs Jones (1885-1963), who was for many years the head of the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota. During World War I, he also served in the US Army's Camouflage Corps.

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In Aymar Embury II, "Architects and the Camouflage Service" in Architectural Forum 27 (November 1919), pp. 137-138, Jones is among those included in a list of architects who had served in the war as camouflage specialists. Embury, himself a prominent architect, was a captain in the Corps of Engineers, United States Reserves [in the list that follows, those in brackets were not per se on Embury's list]—

G.F. Axt, Charles F. Brunckhorst, Cromwell H. Case, Robert A. Clifford, Walter C. Clifford, David C. Comstock, G. Dexter, John H. Eastman, W[illiam] D. Foster, S.N. Hartell, Everit A. Herter, [Laurance Hitt], Burnham Hoyt, Clifford C. Jones, Roy C. Jones, Oliver Larson, Fred R. Lorenz, Alexander MacLean, [Wilmer] Bruce Rabenold, Thomas I. Raguere, Abraham Rattner, Greville Rickard, Reah de Bourg Robinson, [Louis C. Rosenberg], Prentice Sanger, Thomas E. Seyster, [J. André Smith], V.P. Spalding, [Evarts Tracy], Sheldon Viele, Louis F. Voorhees, Ralph T. Walker, Austin Whittlesey, James R. Wilson, and Van Horne D. Wolfe.

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According to other online sources, Roy C. Jones was born in Kendallville IN on June 22, 1885. He attended Purdue University, then earned a BS degree and a Masters in Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to WWI, he worked at Holabird and Roche (Chicago) and McKim, Mead and White (New York). He also taught architecture at the University of Illinois and the University of Minnesota. It was during WWI that Jones served as an army camoufleur in France (not WWII, as was incorrectly claimed in a university senate obituary when he died).

After the war, Jones returned to the faculty of the University of Minnesota, where he was appointed head of the School of Architecture in 1937. He continued to practice architecture, and served as the university's advisor for building design from 1936 to 1950.