William G. Preston


William G. Preston was an American architect who practiced during the last third of the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth. Educated at Harvard University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris., he was active in Boston, New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, New Brunswick and Savannah Georgia where he was brought by George Johnson Baldwin to design the Chatham County courthouse. Preston stayed in Savannah for several years during which time designed the original Desoto Hotel, the Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory and 20 other distinguished public buildings and private homes. He began his professional career working for his father, the builder and architect Jonathan Preston, upon his return to the United States from the École in 1861, and was the sole practitioner in the office from the time his father retired c. 1875 until he took John Kahlmeyer as a partner in about 1885.
The drawings of the Preston firm, now owned by the Boston Public Library, make up "...one of the most complete sets of architectural graphics preserved from the nineteenth century." Many of his buildings were pictured as prints in American Architect and Building News. He is credited with the introduction of the bungalow to the United States through a house loosely of the type that he designed in Monument Beach, Massachusetts in 1879. Preston was an early historic preservationist. He was influential in the successful 1896 effort to prevent the Massachusetts state legislature from demolishing Boston’s historic State House, which had been designed by the noted architect Charles Bulfinch and built in 1798. Bulfinch was also an architect of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
Preston ran his practice for many years from a commercial and office building located at 186 Devonshire Street. He designed Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Rogers Building in 1864, located on Boylston Street near Boston's Copley Square, which housed the school's architecture department. Floor plans for the building show a large, centrally located space devoted to an architectural library and museum. Drawings from the Study Collection were hung on the studio walls and numerous casts and other artifacts also lined the walls and picture rails.
Preston married Estelle M. Evans, whose father was the wealthy real estate developer Brice S. Evans, on December 6, 1866, and the couple had one son, Evans. William was an active member and fellow of the American Institute of Architects and served that organization in the office of first vice-president at the end of the 1890s. He was for many years a member of the Boston Society of Architects, and for thirty years served as its treasurer. He died at his home at 1063 Beacon Street in Brookline in 1910.

Selected projects