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Cobb and Frost

American architectural firm

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 30, 2021
Entity authorityQ5138783 ↗
Source-derived summary

Cobb and Frost was an American architectural firm. Cobb and Frost was founded in Chicago, Illinois by Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost in 1882. The firm was dissolved in 1889 when Cobb began work on designing the Newberry Library. Their most famous building was the Palmer Mansion, designed for Chicago industrialist Potter Palmer.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Cobb and Frost” as american architectural firm. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cobb, Frost and American.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1882, 1889—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1882. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Cobb, Frost and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Cobb and Frost”, the useful work is to connect “american architectural firm” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q5138783. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1882 and 1889.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Locating named sources
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  2. Expand the search: follow Cobb and Frost primary sources, Cobb and Frost archive and Cobb research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cobb and Frost” 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.