page_title: Warren R. Briggs
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Warren R. Briggs / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: John Hoyt Perry House, 134 Center Street, Southport (Fairfield County, Connecticut) cropped This file comes from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These are programs of the National Park Service established for the purpose of documenting historic places. Records consist of measured drawings, archival photographs, and written reports. When reusing please credit: Library of Congress, Prints &amp; Photographs Division, CONN,1-SOUPO,35-1 This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code. Note: This only applies to original works of the Federal Government and not to the work of any individual U.S. state, territory, commonwealth, county, municipality, or any other subdivision. This template also does not apply to postage stamp designs published by the United States Postal Service since 1978. (See § 313.6(C)(1) of Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices). It also does not apply to certain US coins; see The US Mint Terms of Use. This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.
context_page_description: Warren R. Briggs was an American architect who worked in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
context_section_description: Briggs was born 6 June 1850, in Malden, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University and worked for Boston architects Cummings & Sears.  In 1872 he won a scholarship enabling him to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris for two years.  He studied there in the atelier of Louis-Jules André, who had also taught Richardson  Upon his return in 1874 he secured a position with the noted Boston firm of Peabody & Stearns.  In 1876 he began to work for unidentified Bridgeport architect, possibly George Palliser, whose work Briggs' early designs resemble.  In 1877 he established an independent practice.  In 1878 he submitted designs in the competition for the new Indiana State House in Indianapolis, which were not accepted.
  In 1892, Briggs submitted a design for the Connecticut state building at the 1893 Columbian Exposition due to be held in Chicago the following year. The Commissioners responsible for the representation of Connecticut at the Exposition selected his submitted design "for a state building to cost around $10,000". The building was erected at the Exposition grounds in Chicago by the end of 1892 and by the culmination of the Exposition it had seen thousands of visitors pass through its doors and received favourable reviews lauding its "thoroughly homelike structure" 
  He worked alone until 1914, when he re-established his firm as Briggs & Caldwell, with Edward B. Caldwell, Jr.  This firm lasted until 1916 when Caldwell established his own practice, and Briggs returned to his.  Briggs has no known works after 1919 or so, possibly retiring after this.  He later moved permanently to the town of Stratford, Connecticut, where he died 30 May 1933, at the age of 82.  Many of the Briggs & Caldwell-era buildings had Caldwell as primary designer.
  He became well known as an architect of civic structures, and authored several books on school architecture, most prominent of which was Modern American School Buildings, published in 1899 and reissued in 1909.  This work combined new information with that which Briggs had previously published, in book or article form.  It was also liberally illustrated with designs by Briggs, both built and not built.
  Brigg was a baseball devotee, and played at Harvard while a student there.  In 1874, immediately prior to his return to the United States, he organized the first baseball game in England.  He is also believed to have assisted in the invention of the catcher's mask.
caption: John H. Perry House, Southport, 1880.
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