William Washburn (architect)

William Washburn was born October 7, 1808, in Lyme, New Hampshire. He came to Boston very young and was trained as a carpenter.^[1] In 1830 he was assistant to Isaiah Rogers in the conversion of the Old State House into the Boston City Hall.^[2] He first appears in the Boston directories in 1831 as a housewright at the same address as his brothers, Jeremiah and Theodore. By 1833 the brothers had formed a partnership, J. Washburn & Brothers, housewrights.^[3] During the next decade Washburn designed Grace Church (1835, demolished),^[4] the National Theatre (1836, burned)^[5] and the United States Hotel (1840, demolished). The latter building was closely based on the Tremont House (1829), designed by Washburn's former employer Rogers.^[6] The Washburn partnership was dissolved in 1841 and Washburn carried on first in partnership with carpenter Charles W. Brown and then independently.^[7][3]

In 1839 Washburn joined the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association and was elected to its governing board in 1846. He was then appointed to the building committee of the Revere House (1847, demolished), a proposed hotel in Bowdoin Square, and soon after was appointed superintendent, having full oversight of the design and construction of the hotel. The Revere House, together with the earlier United States Hotel, established Washburn as a designer of hotels.^[8]

Not long after the completion of the Revere House Washburn was hired to design the Sagadahock House (1849, burned), a hotel in Bath, Maine.^[6] The distance meant that for the first time Washburn could not build what he designed. From the Boston Directory of 1849 forward he is listed as "architect" rather than "housewright." Over his nearly forty-year professional career Washburn worked independently and as senior member of several partnerships: Washburn & Alexander (c. 1849–c. 1850) with Charles A. Alexander, Washburn & Brown with Edwin Lee Brown (c. 1854–1856), Washburn & Moore (c. 1856) with Frederic H. Moore and William Washburn & Son (c. 1860–c. 1872) with his son, Moses Washburn.^[3][9]

Washburn's Boston hotels included the American House (1851, demolished), the Parker House (1855 et seq., demolished) and Young's Hotel (1860, demolished).^[1] For Paran Stevens he completed the interiors of the Fifth Avenue Hotel (1859, demolished) in New York City, originally designed by Griffith Thomas.^[10] His obituaries also credited him with the Hotel Victoria, built by Stevens in 1872 as an apartment hotel from plans by Richard Morris Hunt and converted into a commercial hotel in 1879.^[1][11] Moses Washburn was his representative in Saint John, New Brunswick, where he designed the Victoria Hotel (1871, burned in 1877)^[12] and the Academy of Music (1872, burned in 1877).^[13]

His churches were the State Street Congregational Church (1852, altered) in Portland, Maine,^[14] and the First Baptist Church (1854, demolished) in Boston,^[15] both in the Gothic Revival style, and the Italianate second Tremont Temple (1853, demolished). After the American Civil War Washburn designed the City Hall (1868, demolished) in Charlestown, a simplified version of the ornate Old City Hall in Boston,^[16] and remodeled the Massachusetts State House (1868). Washburn's changes to the exterior were reversed in a later restoration but his version of the House of Representatives chamber, now the Senate chamber, remains. Here, Washburn pulled back the east and west galleries to be flush with the lower level–which was rusticated–added the north and south galleries and cut holes in the dome to unobtrusively provide for artificial lighting.^[17][18] His last works included the Charles Roberts legislative boarding house (1871) on Beacon Hill, Beethoven Hall (1874, demolished)^[19] and the second Adams House hotel (1883, demolished).^[1] The Roberts boarding house and the Adams House were both designed in an unusual hybrid of the Second Empire and Egyptian Revival styles.^[20]

Very little of Washburn's work is extant. His only hotel-type project to survive is the Roberts boarding house. Of his public and religious projects, only the interior of the State Street Congregational Church and the Massachusetts Senate chamber are extant. His only other extant works are private homes: the Cambridge mansion of Henry A. Fuller (c. 1858)^[21] and a row of houses for James French (c. 1863), occupying the southern side of Tremont Street between West Dedham and Aguadilla Streets.^[22]