William Robert Ware

William Robert Ware, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts into a family of the Unitarian clergy, was an American architect, author, and founder of two important American architectural schools. He received his own professional education at Milton Academy, Harvard College and Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School. In 1859, he began working for Richard Morris Hunt, the founder of the first American architectural school and the AIA. Soon afterward Ware formed a partnership with the civil engineer Edward S. Philbrick, Philbrick and Ware, and they designed the Swedenborgian High Street Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1864, Ware partnered with fellow Harvard graduate Henry Van Brunt to form Ware & Van Brunt. Their Boston-area designs include Harvard's Memorial and Weld Halls, the Episcopal Divinity School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Walter Hunnewell house at the Hunnewell estate in Wellesley, and the Ether Monument at the Boston Public Garden. In 1865, Ware became the first professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.