William Gray Purcell (July 2, 1880April 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.
Early life and education
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.
When Purcell was fifteen, Frank Lloyd Wright built his Oak Park studio on the same block where Charles A. Purcell lived, not far from the Grays. In Chicago, where Purcell went frequently to visit his grandfather at The Interior offices, the work of Louis Sullivan continued to impress the young architect-to-be. His mind was already made up to pursue the study of the building arts in college and, following his graduation from Oak Park High School in 1899, he entered the School of Architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
While he was still enrolled in school, Purcell was hired by William E. Benson (1873–1915) to draw architectural designs for the historically African American village of Kowaliga, Alabama, which had goals of expanding their housing. Unfortunately none of the designs for Kowaliga were built.
Career
After graduation from Cornell in 1903, Purcell returned to Oak Park, Illinois. Purcell considered applying to Frank Lloyd Wright for a position in his architectural practice. Instead, Purcell took a clerking position with Ezra E. Roberts, a stable and prosperous architect of whom Charles A. Purcell thought well. During a dinner party in Oak Park, Purcell met George Grant Elmslie, then the chief draftsman for Louis Sullivan. The two men liked one another immediately, not least because of their shared interest in progressive architecture. When Purcell complained of his situation with Roberts, Elmslie offered to secure Purcell a position in the Sullivan office. However, there was not a great deal of work to be done in the office. Purcell spent five months there, from August to December 1903.
In 1904, Purcell ventured to the West Coast by way of an extended journey through the southwestern United States. He eventually arrived at Los Angeles and applied for work at the office of Myron Hunt, but there was no opening. On the recommendation of those with whom he interviewed, Purcell left southern California for San Francisco. Hired by John Galen Howard, Purcell became clerk of the works for the construction of California Hall, being built on the University of California campus at Berkeley. In 1905 Purcell moved farther up the coast to Seattle, Washington, where he worked for several months in the office of A. Warren Gould.