CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

W. V. Howard

American architect

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ18719146
Source-derived summary

Waldo Vose Howard (October 2, 1841 – November 20, 1927) was an American architect practicing in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts and its suburbs.

Life

Howard was born in 1841 in Norton, Massachusetts. His father, Linus, was a farmer. In 1881, W. V. Howard married Mary (Eaton) Nutter, of Amesbury. They had no children. He had opened his office by 1882. In 1889, he took Fred T. Austin as partner in the firm of Howard & Austin. Austin left in 1896 to work alone, before becoming the partner of Charles A. Brigham (Austin & Brigham) in Boston that same year. In later life, Howard was appointed City Architect of Brockton. Howard died in 1927.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “W. V. Howard” is american architect. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Howard, American and architect, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1841, 1927, 1881, 1882—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1841-10-02. For this dossier, Howard, American and architect is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american architect” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18719146. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1927, 1881 and 1882.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “W. V. Howard”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow W. V. Howard primary sources, W. V. Howard archive and Howard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “W. V. Howard”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from W. V. Howard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.