Personal Data

William Edward Putnam, Jr., was born on January 12, 1873, in Newton Centre, the son of William Edward Putnam and his wife, Florence Jemima Nichols.

He married on June 10, 1908, in Fall River MA to Helen Preston Haughwout (b. 1882-1883 in Fall River), daughter of Velone Haughwout and his wife, Helen P. Preston.

William Putnam died on August 4, 1947, in Boston.

Career

William Putnam graduated from Harvard in 1896 and from MIT in 1898.  In 1902, he joined with Allen Howard Cox in the firm of Putnam and Cox.  In about 1939, Nathaniel Saltonstall and Gardner Cox (Allen Cox’s son) joined the partnership, and it became Putnam and Cox and Saltonstall.  Allen Cox died in July of 1944.  Thereafter, William Putnam joined with Roger Griswold, Cecil I. Wylde, and Theodore G. Ames in the firm of Putnam, Griswold, Wylde, and Ames.  He remained with the firm until his death in 1947.

In 1902, soon after they became partners, Putnam and Cox were the winners of a competition to design a new building for the Boston Athenaeum to be built at the northwest corner of Arlington and Newbury.  The Athenaeum subsequently decided to remain on Beacon Street and the proposed building was not built.

Among Putnam and Cox’s works were the Hotel Bellevue, the American Unitarian Association headquarters on Beacon Street, the Kirstein Business Branch of the Boston Public Library, Angell Memorial Animal Hospital, and a number of fraternity buildings at Amherst College and Mt. Holyoke College.

Back Bay Work