Kirtland Kelesy Cutter was born in Cleveland, OH in 1860. He attended the Brooks Military Academy, and later studied at the Art Students’ League in New York. He studied and traveled in Europe before coming to Spokane Falls to work in his uncle’s bank in 1855. He apparently did some architectural work at this time, but any records of it were lost in the Spokane fire in 1889.

In late 1889 or early 1890, Cutter formed a partnership with John Poetz, and the firm did an enormous business after the fire destroyed Spokane’s business district. When Poetz retired, Karl Gunnar Malmgren, a young Swedish architect, became Cutter’s partner. This partnership lasted until 1917. Cutter practiced in Spokane until 1923, when financial difficulties forced him to leave and establish a successful architectural practice in Long Beach, CA, where he died in 1939.

The partnership of Cutter and Malmgren produced some of the finest structures in the Pacific Northwest. They also designed buildings in Montana, California, New York, and Colorado. For a time the firm had offices in Seattle and Tacoma, where a number of public buildings and private residences were designed. Spokane and the Inland Empire, however, had the greatest concentration of the firm’s work.