William Appleton Potter

William Appleton Potter (1842–1909) was an American architect who designed numerous buildings for Princeton University, as well as municipal offices and churches. He served as a Supervising Architect of the Treasury.

Early career

Potter was the son of Bishop Alonzo Potter and a half-brother of Edward Tuckerman Potter, who was also an architect. Born in 1842 in Schenectady, New York, Potter grew up in Philadelphia and attended Union College. He became an assistant professor at Columbia College, where he taught chemistry for a year, after which he spent another year touring France. His collegiate background distinguished him from most architects of the first half of the 19th-century, who received their training through apprenticeship in the building trades and sometimes in the offices of practicing architects. The apprenticeship tradition was still strong, however, and Potter received his professional training first in the New York office of George B. Post, and then in his half-brother's office at Schenectady. [(August 1989) Princeton History, Number 8 http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Otherdocs/history.html]

Commissions

Chancellor Green Library (1871-1873) for Princeton University was Potter's first major commission. In it, he took the High Victorian Gothic vocabulary and octagonal form used by his half-brother for the Nott Memorial at Union College, and elaborated it into a complex interplay of octagons of various sizes and shapes. For Princeton, retaining Potter represented a shift from dependence on Philadelphia architects to a New York practitioner. He would receive from the college an honorary Master of Arts degree in 1872, and go on to design several other buildings on campus:
* John C. Green Science building (1873-1875) (demolished)
* Alexander Hall (1891-1894)
* East Pyne Building (1896-1897)
* The University Hotel (1875-1877) with his partner Robert Henderson Robertson (demolished)
* Witherspoon Hall (1875-1877)
* Stuart Hall (1875-1877) at Princeton Theological Seminary

Other early works include:
* South Congregational Church (1871-1875), Springfield, Massachusetts
* Berkshire Athenaeum (1874-1876), Pittsfield, Massachusetts

During 1875 and 1876, Potter also served as supervising architect of the United States Treasury. Under his supervision, designs were produced for customhouses, courthouses, and post offices in Kentucky, Indiana, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Tennessee.

In New York City, he designed:
* Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew (1895)
* Church of the Divine Paternity (1898)
* St. Martin's Church (1888) [AIA Guide to New York City, MacMillan, 1967, page 452]

Partnership

During his New York partnership with Robert Henderson Robertson, from 1875 to 1881, the firm produced summer vacation cottages in Newport, Rhode Island,and the Jersey Shore. Potter and Robertson also designed:
* Brown University Library (1875), Providence, Rhode Island
* Charles H. Baldwin House, Newport, Rhode Island (1877-78)
* St. James Protestant Episcopal Chapel; known as the Church of the Presidents, Elberon, New Jersey (1879)
* Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, New York (1887-1889)
* First Reformed Dutch church, Somerville, New Jersey (1896-1897)
* 33 East 67th Street, New York, New York (1903)

Family

Potter had eight brothers, including:

* Clarkson Nott Potter (1825-1882), Democratic member of the House of Representatives after the Civil War
* Robert Brown Potter (1829–1887), United States General in the Civil War
* Edward Tuckerman Potter (1831-1904), architect who designed the Nott Memorial at Union College
* Henry Codman Potter (1835-1908), succeeded Horatio Potter as Bishop of New York in 1887
* Eliphalet Nott Potter (1836-1901), professor and president of Union College and Hobart College

Potter was the uncle of Mrs. J. Kennedy Tod (Maria Howard Potter), and in 1887 designed Innis Arden House and several other buildings for Mr. and Mrs. Tod's Greenwich, Connecticut estate, known as Innis Arden. Today the convert|147|acre|km2|sing=on estate is a public park in Greenwich, and is known as Greenwich Point. Several of Potter's original buildings on the estate remain, and are undergoing restoration under the leadership of the Greenwich Point Conservancy.

Potter died in 1909.

References

* Sarah Bradford Landau, "Edward T. and William A. Potter: American Victorian Architects"; Garland Publishing; New York and London 1979