Warren R. Briggs
Warren R. Briggs (1850–1933) was an American architect who worked in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Biography. 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.