William Gray Purcell

William Gray Purcell (July 2, 1880 – April 11, 1965) was a Prairie School architect in the Midwestern United States. He partnered with George Grant Elmslie, and briefly with George Feick. The firm of Purcell & Elmslie produced designs for buildings in twenty-two states, Australia, and China. The firm had offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Portland, Oregon.

Purcell was born in Wilmette, Illinois on July 2, 1880. His parents, Charles A. and Anna Cora Purcell lived first with William Cunningham and Catherine Garns Gray, Anna's parents, in Oak Park, Illinois. Although the Purcells eventually moved into their own home, except for brief periods the young boy remained with his grandparents over the next five years. In 1886, William Gray Purcell began living permanently with them at his own request. His father was an important grain trader, and his grandfather was editor of The Interior, and a writer of national repute.

For many summers, W. C. Gray had taken fishing vacations on the peninsula of upper Michigan. In 1885, however, he was saddened to realize the extent to which the environment had been despoiled by destructive logging and mining practices. In 1886 Gray arranged the purchase of three square miles of land surrounding an island on a lake in northern Wisconsin, in co-ownership with the recently widowed Nettie Fowler McCormick, also of Chicago. Every following summer from 1887 until his death in 1901, Gray brought his family, friends, and associates to Island Lake Camp, as the isolated forest enclave came to be called.

During this time Purcell became skilled as a photographer, his hobby made possible by the newly available commercial outfits which supplied camera, photographic plates, processing chemicals and printing papers in one package. Purcell received his first camera from W. C. Gray in 1888, a Kodak model given to The Interior office just before public release of the product.

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