Background
William (Professor) R. Ware was born in 1832 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
William (Professor) R. Ware was born in 1832 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
After a formal education at Harvard, and graduation at the age of twenty, he began architectural study at the Lawrence Scientific and Technical School in Cambridge.
Early in his career Mr. Ware became interested in the problems of young men desiring to become architects, and in 1865 he was sent to Paris under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study the system of instruction at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Ecole Centrale.
He received a supplementary training in the Boston office of E. C. Cabot. Then came the Civil War, and after its close Mr. Ware began practice in Boston in association with Henry Van Brunt under the name of Ware & Van Brunt. Among the firm's best known works of the late nineteenth century was the first Unitarian (later Congregational) Church in Boston; Memorial Hall at Harvard (1890); the Harvard Medical Building, Boston, and the Episcopal Seminary in Cambridge.
Early in his career Mr. Ware became interested in the problems of young men desiring to become architects, and in 1865 he was sent to Paris under the auspices of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study the system of instruction at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Ecole Centrale. Following his return in 1866 “M.I.T.” established a Department of Architecture at the Boston school, with Professor Ware in charge, and he remained head of the Department fifteen years. Following his resignation in 1881 Mr. Ware accepted a similar position at Columbia University in New York, in charge of the old School of Mines, where he held the Chair of Architecture twenty- two years, widely honored as one of America's great educators. He was also, over a period of twenty years, a leader in the reform of architectural competitions, of which he successfully conducted a large number.
As a member and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he continued active in the interests of the New York Chapter and the Architectural League. Professor Ware was also an Honorary Corresponding Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and among other honors conferred upon him was the degree of L.L. D. from Harvard University.