William Graves Perry was born November 8, 1883 in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Newburyport. He was a descendent of an old Newburyport seafaring family. Perry graduated from Harvard in 1905, received his first degree in architecture from MIT in 1907, and another from Paris’ L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1913. He taught architecture at Harvard from 1915-1916. In 1908 he married Eleanor Gray Bodine. Together they had three children, two daughters and one son, but divorced in 1934. Perry served as a Captain in the Air Force from 1916-1919. In 1922 he founded the firm of Perry, Shaw, and Hepburn. Their firm continues to be known for university and commercial buildings, including several on the Harvard campus and Colonial Williamsburg’s John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library. Perry’s relationship with Williamsburg began informally in 1926 after a chance meeting with Reverend Goodwin, the originator of the plan to restore the capital. In 1927 Perry, Shaw and Hepburn submitted drawings and were officially hired as the project’s architects. The firm retained ties to the project until the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation created its own architecture department in 1953. Perry married Frances McElfresh Ames in 1945. She remained his wife until he died April 4, 1975 in Boston.
From the guide to the William Graves Perry Papers, 1930-1940, (John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
