Personal Data

James Roby Gregerson was born in 1837-1839 in Boston, the son of Dr. James Gregerson and his wife, Elizabeth W. Sharp (daughter of Daniel Sharp).

He died on February 11, 1898, at 403 Beacon in Boston.

He was unmarried.

Career

James R. Gregerson was an architect in Boston from about 1860, and joined in partnership with George Snell in about 1862 in the firm of Snell and Gregerson.  Snell died in February of 1893, and Gregerson continued as a sole practitioner until his death in 1898.

Bainbridge Bunting (Houses of Boston’s Back Bay) comments that the “work of Snell and Gregerson…possesses a stylistic consistency too strong to pass unnoticed. … While many of their contemporaries merely manipulated Classical forms, Snell and Gregerson, more perhaps than any other contemporary Boston firm, demonstrated a sympathy and understanding of orderly, Academic design.  Although disciplined, their designs are not the rigid mechanical exercises which less gifted academicians so often produced in the name of Classicism.  Usually they demonstrate a good deal of freedom and originality in handling Classical detail but these decorative variations never obscure the architectonic clarity of the composition.  In their hands the French Academic formula is both dignified and adaptable.”

Back Bay Work