Robert Mills (1781-1855), American architect, helped popularize the Greek revival style in the United States.

Robert Mills was born in Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 12, 1781. He studied at Charleston College. After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1800, he became an apprentice of the builder-architect James Hoban. Shortly thereafter Mills met Thomas Jefferson, who brought him to Monticello to study architecture and in 1804 sent him on a tour of the eastern states to visit new construction.

Mills worked for Benjamin H. Latrobe, architect of the Capitol, from 1804 to 1808. Concurrently, Mills began his own practice, designing Sansom Street Church in Philadelphia (1804) with a circular auditorium and covering dome, the first church dome in America. In 1808 he established his own practice as an architect and engineer in Philadelphia. Here he built row houses (1809), a Unitarian church (1811-1813), wings on Independence Hall (1812), and the Upper Ferry Bridge (1812; destroyed), whose single arch spanning...