Personal Data

William Downes Austin was born on April 6, 1856, in Dorchester, the son of William Downes Austin and his wife, Catherine D. Austin (daughter of William Austin).

He married on June 8, 1887, in Boston, to Emily W. Barker (b. 1864-1865 in Roxbury), daughter of William T. Barker and his wife, Emily W. (LNU).

William D. Austin died on May 25/26, 1943, in Cambridge.

Career

William D. Austin graduated from MIT. In about 1892, he joined with Frederick W. Stickney in the firm of Stickney and Austin. Stickney maintained his primary office in Lowell, and Austin in Boston. They rarely collaborated and the offices became wholly independent of each other in about 1900. Both continued to use the name Stickney and Austin until shortly before Stickney’s death in 1918.

William Austin served as principal architect for the Metropolitan Park Commission and the Metropolitan District Commission from the mid-1890s through the mid-1920s, and possibly later. In that compacity, he designed numerous structures, among them the police stations at the Nantasket Beach (Hull), Blue Hills (Milton), and Charles River Upper Basin (Newton) Reservations; a series of buildings for the Revere Beach Reservation (including the bathing pavilions, bandstand, bath house, police station, and Superintendent’s house), Jamaica Pond boathouse, and the lion house and bird house at Franklin Park Zoo. He also designed the Charles river Speedway administration building and the South Boston aquarium.
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