McKim, Mead & White were celebrity architects serving America’s elite. William Rutherford Mead was the cousin of President Rutherford B. Hayes, he was involved with the American Academy in Rome, was a man of substance, wealth and contacts. Mead, described as "authoritative" and "quiet," was known as, “the center of the office,” hiring and firing, overseeing the jobs and production that are even more the task of architects than flashy design. Mead is credited with relatively few original designs, but the central building facing onto the Naugatuck Town Green, the Salem School, was primarily Mead's design.
That a school was central to the new City Beautiful to be built, and at the top of the green, looking down the Green's central axis toward the commercial center of town suggests the importance the creators of Naugatuck and the architects placed on education.
