Otto R. Eggers attended New York public schools and studied for one year at the Cooper Union. He began his architectural practice in 1899. In 1909 he joined the office of John Russell Pope. Three years later he won a scholarship that allowed him to extend his study in Europe. Eggers and Daniel Paul Higgins became junior partners in the Pope firm in 1922; upon Pope's death in 1937, the firm became Eggers and Higgins.
Eggers executed Pope's designs for the National Gallery of Art and the Jefferson Memorial, both in Washington, D.C. Among his own major works are: the Payne Whitney Gymnasium at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; the Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, Texas; and the Theodore Roosevelt Wing of the American Museum of Natural History, New York. In addition to his accomplishments as a designer, Eggers was an especially expert architectural delineator.
