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William Albert Swasey

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 revisionSep 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ89112074 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Albert Swasey (11 October 1863 – 21 March 1940) was an American architect who designed domestic and commercial buildings in St. Louis, Missouri. His work includes theaters for the Shubert family in New York City.

Early life

Although the family normally lived in Boston, Swasey was born in Melbourne, where his parents were temporarily living at the time. His parents were Hattie Hobson Jewett and John Babson Swasey, a successful businessman. His father's firm, J. B. Swasey Commission Company, had offices in Boston, London, and Melbourne.

He was educated at Boston Latin School, followed by a brief stint at a military boarding school in Paris. He then enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he studied architecture, graduating in 1882.

Career

He began working for C. C. Height in New York before moving to Chicago where he worked for the firms of Burnham and Root and Henry Ives Cobb. Swasey moved to St.

Editorial summary

“William Albert Swasey” enters the record as american architect. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what William, Albert and Swasey can confirm, complicate or overturn.

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—1863, 1940, 1882—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1863. Its strongest next move is a source search built around William, Albert and Swasey.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“William Albert Swasey” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, William, Albert and Swasey provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q89112074. VIAF identifies the subject as 173022474. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1863, 1940 and 1882.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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
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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 “William Albert Swasey”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow William Albert Swasey primary sources, William Albert Swasey archive and William 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 “William Albert Swasey”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “William Albert Swasey” 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.