Alexander Parris
Alexander Parris (
November 24,
1780 -
June 16,
1852) was a prominent
American architect-
engineer. His work transitions between
Federal style architecture and later
Greek Revival.
Parris was born in
Halifax, Massachusetts. When aged 16, he apprenticed to a housewright in
Pembroke, but talent would lead him towards
architecture. Married to Silvina Bonney Stetson in
1800, he moved to
Portland, Maine. The seaport, bombarded during the
Revolution by the
Royal Navy, was then experiencing a building boom, and the young architect received a number of commissions, both residential and commercial. Then, in
1810, Paris traveled to
Richmond, Virginia, where the executive mansion would be one of his creations. In the
War of 1812, he served in
Plattsburg, New York as a "Captain of the Artificers" (engineers), gaining knowledge of military requirements for engineering.
In
1815, he moved to
Boston, where he found a position in the office of architect
Charles Bulfinch. Like his famous employer, from whom he learned, Parris produced refined residences, churches and commercial buildings. In
1818, he helped complete the "Bulfinch Building" at
Massachusetts General Hospital, when Bulfinch himself was called to
Washington to work on the
U.S. Capitol Building. Between
1815 and
1827, Parris would become Boston's leading architect.
In
1824, however, he began a twenty year association working for the
Boston Navy Yard in
Charlestown. He would end his career as chief engineer at the
Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in
Kittery, Maine. With the federal government as patron, Parris produced plans for numerous utilitarian structures, from storehouses to ropewalks, and was superintendent of construction at one of the nation's first
drydocks, located at the Charlestown base. Today, he is fondly remembered for his stalwart stone
lighthouses, commissioned by the
U.S. Treasury Department. They are often of a tapered style termed "windswept."
Parris balanced the delicacy of his "superb draftsmanship," as it was called, with the coarseness of his building material of choice:
granite. His most famous building,
Quincy Market, is made of it.
He died in
Pembroke, Massachusetts.
|
United First Parish Church, interior |
Buildings & Lighthouses:*1804 - James Deering House, Portland, Maine
*1804 - Portland Bank, Portland, Maine
*1805 - Hunnewell-Shepley House, Portland, Maine
*1807 - Preble House, Portland, Maine
*1812 - Wickham House, Richmond, Virginia
*1813 - Governor's Mansion, Richmond, Virginia
*1816 - David Sears House, Boston, Massachusetts
*1816 - Watertown Arsenal,
Watertown, Massachusetts*1819 -
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Boston, Massachusetts
*1822 - St. Paul's Episcopal Church,
Windsor, Vermont*1824 - Pilgrim Hall,
Plymouth, Massachusetts*1826 -
Quincy Market, Boston, Massachusetts
*1828 -
United First Parish Church,
Quincy, Massachusetts*1834 - St. Joseph's Church, Boston, Massachusetts
*1834 - Ropewalk, Boston Navy Yard, Charlestown, Massachusetts
*1839 - Saddleback Ledge Lighthouse, between the islands of
Vinalhaven and
Isle au Haut, Maine*1847 - Mount Desert Rock Lighthouse, south of
Mount Desert Island, Maine*1848 - Libby Island Lighthouse,
Machiasport, Maine, at the entrance to Machias Bay
*1848 -
Matinicus Rock Lighthouse, 6 miles south of Matinicus Island, Maine
*1848 - Whitehead Island Lighthouse, Whitehead Island, Maine, at the southern entrance to
Penobscot Bay*1849 -
Execution Rocks Lighthouse,
Long Island Sound, New York
*1850 - Monhegan Island Lighthouse,
Monhegan Island, Maine*
Alexander Parris Digital Project
