Alice Millard
American bookseller (1873–1938)

Alice Parsons Millard (May 4, 1873 – July 15, 1938) was an American bookseller and promoter of culture in the Arroyo Seco region of Los Angeles County. She is widely known for commissioning Frank Lloyd Wright to build her house (La Miniatura) in Pasadena.
Millard was born in Jefferson City, Missouri. She had one sister, Emily.
Chicago
After a few years, Millard's family moved to Chicago. In 1896 she and her sister were educated in Europe; Alice studied art in London. On a visit home to Chicago, she wandered into the Chicago book store operated by A.C. McClurg and asked for a book on William Morris. George M. Millard, who worked in the Rare Book Department, "was pleased to help the attractive young woman who had interests similar to his own," according to Ward Ritchie. A romance ensued and in 1901, Parsons accompanied Millard on a book-buying trip to England. Parsons was 28 when she married Millard (age 55) in St.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alice Millard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.