William Ward Watkin

Who was William Ward Watkin?

William Ward Watkin was an architect primarily practicing in Houston, Texas.

Watkin was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Danville, Pennsylvania. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1908, he spent a year in Europe and then moved to Boston, Massachusetts to join the architecture firm of Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson. Watkin was then sent to Houston, TX to work on plans for Rice Institute and was the firm's representative supervisor there. Edgar Odell Lovett, the President of Rice Institute, offered Watkin a faculty position in architectural engineering when the Institute opened in 1912. He later became the head of the architecture department, a position he held until his death.