Louis W. Ross

Who was Louis W. Ross?

Louis Warren Ross was an American architect from Boston, Massachusetts, perhaps best known for his work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he designed over thirty of the campus buildings there.

Ross was born in Arlington, Massachusetts on July 18, 1893, the third of the five children of Louis Hall Ross and Mable Louisa Rawson. He was the grandson of agriculturalist Warren Winn Rawson and Helen Maria Mair. Graduating from Arlington High School in June 1913, he entered the Massachusetts Agricultural College as a pomology major in the fall of that same year. During his time at the college he was notably active in college sports, having played on the football, baseball, and hockey teams, serving as captain of the latter. He was also a member of the campus "mandolin club" and the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.

Ross graduated in 1917, entering the army soon after. He would serve as an infantry lieutenant in the 166th Regiment of the 42nd Infantry Division, better known as the "Rainbow Division", in France during the First World War. By the end of the war he had been awarded a Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster.