Fenwick collection of Niernsee photographs

John Rudolph Niernsee (1814-1885) was an architect who lived and worked in Baltimore at times in the 1840s-1880s. Born in Vienna, Austria, Niernsee trained as a civil engineer and architect, but worked first as a surveyor after coming to the United States in his twenties. He did surveying work for railways in the southern United States and for the army engineer's office in Washington, D.C. Settling in Baltimore, he worked on the staff of Benjamin Latrobe, and married Emily Bradenbaugh of Baltimore. Becoming active as an architect, Niernsee formed a partnership with James Crawford Neilson in circa 1848, designing many city and country residences, and churches in several states. Projects at this time in Baltimore included a depot for the Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad (later known as Calvert Station), the houses at 1 and 3 West Mount Vernon Place, and Grace and St. Peter's Episcopal Church (1850).

Around 1856, Niernsee returned south to work on the State House of South Carolina in Columbia. Residing in Columbia through the Civil War, he was again involved in surveying, this time for military fortifications in the region, and he suffered heavy personal losses of property when Union troops attacked the city. Returning to Baltimore from roughly 1865-1883, he was a consultant but not a designer of buildings for the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and was a U.S. representative to the Vienna International Exhibition at Vienna in 1873. Many of his buildings from this time in the Baltimore business district were destroyed in the 1904 fire, but the Academy of Music on Howard St., the Y.M.C.A. at Saratoga and Charles streets, and additional residences were among his projects. Back in South Carolina by 1883 to complete the State House, Niernsee died there in 1885.

Ellen McNally Atkinson was the daughter of Michael Rogerson McNally and his wife Eleanor. Michael McNally was a teacher who lived on Centre St. Ellen married Thomas Covington Atkinson in 1844, and their youngest son was George Gibson Atkinson (d. 1918).