Richard Upjohn

Richard Upjohn
Upjohn oil portrait circa 1870
Born	(1802-01-22)22 January 1802 Shaftesbury, England, UK
Died	16 August 1878(1878-08-16) (aged 76) Putnam County, New York, USA
Occupation	Architect
Buildings	Trinity Church in New York City The Edward King House in Newport, Rhode Island St. Paul's Cathedral in Buffalo, New York

Richard Upjohn (22 January 1802 – 16 August 1878) was a British-born American architect who emigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to such popularity in the United States. Upjohn also did extensive work in and helped to popularize the Italianate style. He was a founder and the first president of the American Institute of Architects. His son, Richard Mitchell Upjohn, (1828-1903), was also a well-known architect and served as a partner in his continued architectural firm in New York.

Richard Upjohn was born in Shaftesbury, England, where he was apprenticed to a builder and cabinet-maker. He eventually became a master-mechanic. He and his family emigrated to the United States in 1829. They initially settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts and then moved on to Boston in 1833, where he worked in architectural design. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1836. His first major project was for the entrances to the Boston Common, the town's central park and his first church would be St. John's Episcopal Church in Bangor, Maine. He had relocated to New York City by 1839 where he worked on alterations to the famed Trinity Church on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. The alterations were later abandoned and he was commissioned to design a new church, completed in 1846, and still extant today. He published his extremely influential book, "Upjohn's rural architecture: Designs, working drawings and specifications for a wooden church, and other rural structures", in 1852. The designs in this publication were widely used across the country by builders, with many examples remaining.