Personal Data

Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, Jr. was born on August 18, 1854, in Portland, Maine, the son of Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow and his wife, Elizabeth Porter.  He was the nephew of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

Alexander Longfellow died on February 16, 1934, in Portland, Maine.

He was unmarried.

Career

Alexander Longfellow graduated from Harvard in 1876.  He then studied at MIT, worked for a year in the offices of Cabot and Chandler, and studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  He returned to Boston in December of 1881 and the next year entered the offices of Henry Hobson Richardson, where he remained for four years.

In March of 1886, he opened his own offices in association with Alfred B. Harlow, and in about 1888 they joined with Frank E. Alden to form the firm of Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow.

Among its work, the firm designed the Cambridge City Hall,  Carey Athletic Building at Harvard, and Winthrop Hall at the Episcopal Theological School.  Longfellow also designed 115 Brattle Street in Cambridge, a Colonial Revival home he built for his first cousin, the daughter of the poet.

In 1892, when his firm won the competition for the design of the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Alden and Harlow moved there, while Longfellow remained in Boston.  Among the firm’s other work in Pittsburgh were the Vandergrift and Conestoga Buildings and the Duquesne Club.

In 1895, Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow dissolved, and Alden and Harlow formed their own firm in Pittsburgh.  Longfellow continued as a sole practitioner in Boston, working in association with his brother, Richard King Longfellow

His work included a number of school and public library buildings as well as residential and commercial work.  Among his work were the Phillips Brooks House and the Semitic Museum at Harvard; the Bertram and Eliot Halls at Radcliffe; the Oliver Wendell Holmes and Abraham Lincoln schools in Boston; the Theodore Parker Church in West Roxbury; the Hunnewell Building at the Arnold Arboretum; and the Maine Historical Society’s library.

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