Architect
Centurion, 1910–1957
Born 16 October 1873 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Died 4 May 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts
Buried Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
, Concord, Massachusetts
Proposed by Walter Cook and George Haven Putnam
Elected 5 November 1910 at age thirty-seven
Archivist’s Note: Great-nephew of (nonmember) Ralph Waldo Emerson; son of J. Haven Emerson; brother of Haven Emerson; brother-in-law of Harold T. White
Century Memorial
William Emerson graduated from Harvard in 1895 and then entered the Columbia School of Architecture. After two years he went to the Beaux-Arts, and continued there for several years studying architecture.
He practised architecture in New York till 1919, specializing in model tenements; and then he joined the faculty of the School of Architecture at M.I.T. serving as Chairman of the faculty and Dean until his retirement in 1939. On that occasion Harvard gave him an honorary Art.D., and he was made Dean Emeritus by M.I.T.
Bill Emerson himself was more important than any particular thing he did. He was President of the American Association for the United Nations, and of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and of the Boston Society of Architects. He was Chairman of the Unitarian Service Committee and of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. He was a life member of the Corporation of M.I.T. and of the Corporation of Simmons College. The roster of these activities indicates the broad range of his interests and his important positions, the confidence his fellows placed in him.
He was a modest, self-effacing man. No matter what he was doing he always seemed to be exactly the same person—putting his whole soul into whatever he set his hand to as though it were his only interest, so versatile were his talents and so inexhaustible his sympathy and energy. During the long years he was Dean at M.I.T. the young flocked to his house as though it were a shrine. He was known as “Uncle Billy Emerson,” and he really was a saint. He was patient and understanding, but steadfastly loyal to his own ideals and standards: a visionary who accomplished very practical things.
Of the Old Guard of architects that were schooled in the atelier of Victor Laloux before the turn of the century, only Howard Greenley and Billy Delano now are left. Indeed, the sun has set forever on that whole world where darling Trilby lived and sung, where all the trees were green and every goose a swan.
George W. Martin
1958 Century Association Yearbook
