George Albert Clough (May 27, 1843 – December 30, 1910) was an architect working in
Boston in the late 19th-century. He designed the
Suffolk County Courthouse in
Pemberton Square, and numerous other buildings in the city and around New England. Clough served as the first City Architect of Boston from 1876 to 1883.
Life and career
George Albert Clough was born May 27, 1843, in
Blue Hill, Maine. He attended the Blue Hill Academy and worked as a draftsman for his father, the shipbuilder Asa Clough. He moved to Boston in 1863, entering the firm of
Snell & Gregerson as a student. He remained with Snell until 1869, when he established his own practice.[1] In 1876 he was elected City Architect of Boston, the first person to hold the office.[a] He continued in that position until 1883, when he was replaced by
Charles J. Bateman.[5] He was awarded his largest commission, the
Suffolk County Courthouse, in competition two years later in 1885. This building was completed in 1893, largely to Clough's design but with modifications he disapproved of.[1] He was a private practitioner until 1901, when he formed a partnership with Herbert L. Wardner. Clough & Wardner operated until Clough's death in 1910.
Wardner continued to practice on his own in Boston until 1915, when he moved to
Poughkeepsie, New York, moving again to
Akron, Ohio, in 1919,[6] where he died in 1939.
^The office of City Architect was established December 20, 1875.[2] Clough was nominated January 31, 1876,[3] and was unanimously elected to the office by a vote of the City Council on February 10, 1876.[4]
^"The City Council," Boston Daily Advertiser, December 21, 1875, 4.
^"The City Council," Boston Daily Advertiser, February 1, 1876, 1.
^"The City Council," Boston Daily Advertiser, February 11, 1876, 4.
^"Municipal Affairs," Boston Daily Advertiser, February 27, 1883, 2.
^"Wardner, Herbert Leavitt," in Report of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Class of Eighteen Ninety-three (1923): 303.
^"City's First Architect," Boston Daily Globe, January 1, 1911, 18.
^Walter Muir Whitehill. The Making of an Architectural Masterpiece: The Boston Public Library. American Art Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Autumn, 1970), p.14
^Annual report of the School Committee of the City of Boston, 1873
^American architect and building news, Jan. 9, 1897
^Stimpson. Rockland, Rockport and Camden. New England Magazine, Sept. 1904
Further reading
Massachusetts of today: a memorial of the state, historical and biographical, issued for the World's Columbian exposition at Chicago. Columbia publishing company, 1892.
Samuel Atkins Eliot, ed. "George Albert Clough." Biographical history of Massachusetts: biographies and autobiographies of the leading men in the state,
Volume 3. Boston: Massachusetts Biographical Society, 1911