James K. Wilson (1828-94) is the earliest known Cincinnati-born architect of major importance. In 1852 he married Virginia Keys, daughter of one of Glendale’s wealthy founders, and in the 1855 petition for incorporation of the village, Wilson was listed third among the 30 petitioners. Walter Langsam believes that “Wilson may have been involved in the consciously ‘rural,’ curvilinear layout of Glendale (although he has not been credited with it), and seems to have designed a number of the early residences here, including 2 Forest Place, which he soon sold to Charles Davis as a summer residence. Wilson was responsible for the core of the house; the wings were added by Archibald Denison in the mid-1950s. In 1879, Wilson was listed as living on Woodbine, but the specific address has not been determined.

James K. Wilson was born in Cincinnati, but grew up in Philadelphia, where he first apprenticed with a prominent architect. In New York City, he worked for Martin E. Thompson, an innovative architect who favored the Greek Revival style, and James Renwick, Jr., one of the finest and most influential architects in mid-19th-century America. At the time Wilson was working of him, Renwick was working on a Second Empire style gallery in Washington, DC, which is now part of the Smithsonian Institutions.

By 1848, Wilson was back in Cincinnati and practiced here until 1879. He brought a greater variety and sophistication to historic-inspired eclectic styles in Cincinnati. His connection with the Keys family makes one believe he was the designer of as many as three houses for that family in East Walnut Hills, including a superb Gothic Revival villa for John Baker, who also married into the Keys family. The surrounding 30-acre estate, known as Woodburn, gave its name to the nearby avenue. This house at 1831 Keys Crescent, built about 1853 for John Baker’s daughter Julia, and her husband Samuel Keys, is also attributed to Wilson. It was later the home of John Baker’s great-grandson John Baker Hollister, who established a long-lived law firm with Robert A. Taft and John Longworth Stettinius in 1924.

In the late 1860s, Wilson’s design for steel magnate George Shoenberger of Scarlet Oaks in Clifton was an early and highly-evolved example of High Victorian Gothic. His masterpiece is the Plum Street Temple (1864-66), designated a National Historic Landmark for its unique Moorish style and its association with Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, founder of Reform Judaism in America.