Royal Barry Wills Associates architectural collection, 1925-2013 (bulk 1920s-1980)

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

Royal Barry Wills was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on August 21, 1895. Upon graduation from Melrose High School in 1914, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied architectural engineering. Graduating in 1918 in the midst of World War I, Wills enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve and took a training course in naval architecture, which led to a position in the design department of a shipbuilding company in Philadelphia. Returning to Boston in 1919, Wills became a designing engineer with the Turner Construction Company.

At Turner Construction Company, Wills worked on, in his words, "large concrete structures," but his real interest lay in residential architecture, with the goal of providing well-designed, well-constructed, and affordable suburban houses for middle- and upper-middle class Americans. He developed a plan to promote himself and his designs by contracting with Boston newspapers to provide building plans for a variety of house styles - including "half-timbered English cottages," "French manor houses," and "garrisons" - that would be offered for sale in the newspapers. Readers were encouraged to contact Wills through the papers with questions they might have about home building. The newspaper exposure brought clients to Wills, and he was able to leave Turner Construction Company in 1925 and open his own firm at 8 Beacon Street in Boston. For these clients, Wills began to design houses in a variety of styles, but gradually his focus turned to the traditional New England Cape Cod-style house and this cemented his reputation. The public responded enthusiastically to Wills's ability to meld traditional design with modern technology and to his attention to detail - the carefully studied proportions, nearly perfect symmetry, narrow clapboards, wide muntins, massive corbeled chimneys, bow windows, and more.

During the 1930s, Wills began to attract national attention. In 1933, he received a gold medal from President Herbert Hoover for his 1932 winning entry in the Better Homes in America Small House competition. He would go on win medals and honorable mentions in House Beautiful and Better Homes and Gardens competitions among others. In 1938 Life magazine and Architectural Forum invited eight well-known American architects to participate in a competition to design homes for specific families in four income categories. In the category for people with incomes of $5,000 to $6,000, Royal Barry Wills was pitted against Frank Lloyd Wright. The Blackbourn family of Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, selected Wills's traditional house over Wright's modern design.

Wills's success was as much the result of his business acumen as it was his aptitude for design. Writing in This Business of Architecture (first published in 1941), he noted that the architect must be both a professional and a businessman. "There is no other way to succeed amidst competition from within and without the profession." In the book, Wills and his collaborator Leon Keach offered advice about setting up a business and about how to promote oneself: enter architectural competitions, give illustrated lectures, speak on the radio, author regular newspaper and architectural columns. All of these things and more Wills did with consummate skill to promote himself and his work: He wrote eight books offering advice about architecture, of which hundreds of thousands of copies were sold; hosted a radio program; lectured widely; received numerous awards; and was the subject or author of hundreds of magazine articles.

The Wills firm, which by the mid-1930s included Merton S. Barrows and Robert E. Minot, both MIT-trained architects, and later, Warren J. Rohter and Wills's son Richard, both educated at the Boston Architectural Center (now Boston Architectural College), would go on to design more than 2,500 houses across the United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. After Royal Barry Wills's death in 1962, the firm continued to design houses and other structures throughout the United States that were based on the traditional principles expounded by Wills.

Sources

Related Archival Materials at Historic New England\n The following materials may also be of interest: \n -Royal Barry Wills Associates, 2017 Gift, Jessica Wills-Lipscomb, Accession number 2017.78.1\n ·Perspective: Dr. John Dreyfus House, Quincy, Massachusetts, 1954 - AR001.USMA.1000.001\n ·Advertisement: Guildway Small Home Club, New York, New York, 1938 - EP001.12.002.005.095\n ·Advertisement: Kyanize Self-Smoothing Paints Varnishes Enamels, Boston Varnish Company, Everett Station, Boston, Massachusetts - EP001.12.013.005.013\n ·Book: More Houses for Good Living, by Royal Barry Wills Associates, Richard Wills, Robert E. Minot, and Warren H. Rohter, 1968 - NA7120.R75\n ·Book: Houses for Good Living, by Royal Barry Wills, 1946 - NA7120.W65 1946\n ·Book: Houses for Homemakers, by Royal Barry Wills, 1945 - NA7127.W618\n ·Book: Living on the Level: One Story Houses, by Royal Barry Wills, 1955 - NA7127.W6185 \n ·Book: Better Houses for Budgeteers: Sketches and Plans, by Royal Barry Wills, 1941 - NA7201.W617\n ·Book: Houses Have Funny Bones, by Royal Barry Wills, 1951 - NA737.W53 A3\n ·Wills, Royal Barry, and Leon Keach. This Business of Architecture. New York, NY: Reinhold Publishing Corp., 1941.\n ·Wills, Royal Barry. Planning Your Home Wisely. New York, NY: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1946.\n \n Publications\n The following publications reference this collection:\n ·Condon, Lorna. (2017, Winter). Digitizing Architects Good Living Legacy. Historic New England, 17 (3), 30.\n ·Condon, Lorna, and Lynne Paschetag. (2018, Winter). The Kinds of Houses Most Americans Want. Historic New England, 18 (3), 6-10.\n ·Floyd, Margaret Henderson. Architectural Education and Boston: Centennial Publication of the Boston Architectural Center - 1889-1989. Boston, MA: Boston Architectural Center, 1989.\n ·Gebhard, David. Royal Barry Wills and the American Colonial Revival. Winterthur Portfolio 27 (Spring 1992): 45-74.\n ·O'Gorman, James F., ed., et al. Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England, 2010.\n ·Schuler, Stanley. The Cape Cod House: America's Most Popular Home West Chester, PA: Schiffer Publishing Co., 1982.\n ·Wilson, Richard Guy. The Colonial Revival House. New York, NY: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., 2004.