Young was born on June 19, 1798 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, the son of Capt. Samuel and Rebecca (Burnham) Young. The immigrant ancestor was John Young, who settled in Salem, Massachussets, in the seventeenth century; from him Samuel was fourth in line. His father was a successful builder and architect.
Young was trained in his father's work. At some time during his earlier active life - probably during the early eighteen twenties - he was a pupil and assistant of Alexander Parris in Boston.
Young became a designing builder at an early age, and is so mentioned and listed as a separate taxpayer in 1820. The earlier work of Young in Lebanon and Norwich, Vermont, where the Congregational Church is attributed to him, is in the usual delicate late Colonial style of the time. In 1828-1829 he was architect of two buildings built that year at Dartmouth College - Thornton and Wentworth halls, completed in 1829; drawings for rejected schemes for them are preserved in the Dartmouth Library. In 1839 he designed Reed Hall at Dartmouth, a building largely occupied by the library, and in 1852-1853 he advised his brother Ira with regard to the building of an observatory.
Toward the end of 1832 he was appointed architect for the state Capitol of Vermont at Montpelier, built 1833-1836, burned 1857. Much of Young's earlier building, especially the Doric portico, was preserved in the later structure built after the fire. Apparently he took up residence in Montpelier, for he is referred to as "of Vermont" in the records of the American Institute of Architects in 1836. Meanwhile, probably in 1836, he had won a competition for the Boston Customs House. He moved to Boston, and the construction of this great building, still in part preserved, occupied him for nearly ten years; it was completed in 1847. He also did other work in the neighborhood during this period; besides many houses, schools, and factories, the Romanesque Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston and the Court House in Lowell (also in an Italianate Romanesque) are credited to him. He was also the architect of the Worcester, Massachussets, Court House (1844), a beautifully detailed, pedimented, granite building in the Greek Corinthian, which still (1943) stands as the left-hand end pavilion of the present Court House. The great scale, the superb construction, and the powerful design of the granite Boston Customs House won great acclaim; when in 1850 Robert Mills ceased to be architect of the federal buildings, Young was a natural choice as his successor. The exact date of his appointment is lost, but, when in 1853 Captain Alexander Bowman was made director of the newly established construction branch of the Treasury Department, he found Young there and continued him as supervising architect, a post he held until the appointment of Isaiah Rogers on July 28, 1862.
As architect for the Treasury Department, Young found himself designer of the tremendous number of customs houses, federal court houses, post-offices, and marine hospitals built during the eighteen fifties in a valiant attempt to keep pace with the phenomenal growth of the country. In these buildings necessity for speed and economy in design and construction led to a fruitful standardization of building types and rationalized construction methods. The most important innovation was the wide use of iron in these buildings. Wrought-iron rolled beams had first been used in the Harpers' Building in New York in 1851; two years later the United States Government put itself in the forefront of the advanced building of the time by constructing these federal buildings.
Young's federal buildings fall into four different classes. A few are monumental classic edifices with free-standing porticos or colossal pilasters, like the Norfolk Customs House (1853-1859), the St. Louis Appraiser's Stores (1852-1859), the graceful (old) Galveston Custom House (1856-1858), and the dignified Appraiser's Stores at San Francisco. Others include the Indianapolis Court House and Post-Office (1856-1861), the New Haven Customs House and Post-Office (1855-1860), that at Detroit (1856-1860), and excellent stone examples at Sandusky, Ohio (1854-1856), Providence, Rhode Island (1855-1857), and Windsor, Vermont (1857-1858), as well as many others. During his service with the Treasury Department, Young was also the architect of the south front of the Treasury building (1860), in which he carried out Mills's earlier scheme without change. About this time he was the author of General Descriptions and Specifications of the Alterations in the Present Custom House Building in New York for the Assistant Treasurer of the United States (1862). After leaving the Treasury, Young seems to have done little other work, living quietly in retirement in Washington. During his later years he was crippled with rheumatism.
Young was married to Polly Hough of Lebanon, New Hampshire, on January 11, 1823; she died October 7, 1825, leaving a daughter, Helen L. , born January 23, 1825. His second wife was Hannah Green Ticknor, who died in 1859. He is said to have married a third time in Washington, but his wife predeceased him.
