Alexander Parris - Reference

Architect, born in Hebron, Maine, USA. Based in Boston, he became known for his Neoclassical designs and monumental masonry, such as the governor's residence, Richmond, VA (1812). He is also credited with a number of coastal engineering works.

Alexander Parris (November 24, 1780 - June 16, 1852) was a prominent American architect-engineer.

Parris was born in Halifax, Massachusetts. Married to Silvina Bonney Stetson in 1800, he moved to Portland, Maine, then experiencing a building boom. Parris received numerous residential and commercial commissions, working in the Federal style to create landmarks for a community with both affluence and open land to reinvent itself. When in 1817 Bulfinch was called to Washington to work on the U.S. Capitol Building, Parris helped complete the Bulfinch Building at Massachusetts General Hospital. With Bulfinch's departure, Parris soon became the city's leading architect, and a proponent of what would be called "Boston Granite Style," with austere, monolithic stonework. 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.

Parris balanced the delicacy of his "superb draftsmanship," as it was called, with the coarseness of his building material of choice: granite. lighthouses:

1801 - Joseph Holt Ingraham House, Portland, Maine 1803-1804 - Maine Fire & Marine Insurance Company Building, Portland, Maine 1804 - James Deering House, Portland, Maine 1805 - Commodore Edward Preble House, Portland, Maine 1805 - Hunnewell-Shepley House, Portland, Maine 1806-1807 - Portland Bank, Portland, Maine 1807 - St. John's Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire 1812 - Wickham House, Richmond, Virginia 1813 - Governor's Mansion, Richmond, Virginia 1816 - Watertown Arsenal, Watertown, Massachusetts 1819 - Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Boston, Massachusetts 1819 - David Sears House, 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 1836 - Naval Hospital, Chelsea, 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 -- southern entrance to Penobscot Bay 1849 - Execution Rocks Lighthouse, Long Island Sound, New York 1850 - Monhegan Island Lighthouse, Monhegan Island, Maine

Reference

Richard M. Candee, "Maine Towns, Maine People -- Architecture and the Community, 1783-1820," a chapter in Maine in the Early Republic; Maine Historical Society & Maine Humanities Council;