Background
Brigham was born, raised, and educated in Watertown, Massachusetts schools and graduated at age 15 in 1856 in the first class of Watertown High School.
Brigham was born, raised, and educated in Watertown, Massachusetts schools and graduated at age 15 in 1856 in the first class of Watertown High School.
He apprenticed to the Boston architect Gridley J.F. Bryant.
He had no formal education in architecture. Brigham served as a sergeant in the Union Army during the American Civil War, then began work for John Hubbard Sturgis. The resulting coastal New England houses of the 1880s by Brigham and other Boston architects defined the shingle style in one of the most original and distinguished epochs of American architectural history, from which other notable architects, such as Henry Hobson Richardson, emerged.
He also designed the Watertown town seal.
Brigham"s work reflects the eclecticism and historicism prevalent in the last quarter of the 19th century, initiating fusion of the complex eclectic references of the English Queen Anne revival with American colonial design.