American architect, born in Shaftesbury, England, on the 22nd of January 1802. After receiving a fair education he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker and builder; became a master mechanic in his craft and worked at it in England until 1829; removed to America, where he worked at his profession, first in Massachusetts, and later in New York. He is best known as a builder of churches, mostly in Gothic architecture, although some of his residences and other buildings contained ideas much in advance of his time. His first work was the entrances to Boston Common, followed shortly by the church of St. John, in Bangor, ME. Among his most noted buildings are the churches of the Ascension and the Holy Communion, Trinity Chapel, St. Thomas’s, the Trinity Building, the Corn Exchange, replaced now by a sixteen-story building, all in New York; Christ and Grace churches, and Church of the Pilgrims, in Brooklyn; and St. Paul’s at Buffalo. The Trinity steeple (286 feet high) was for years the highest building in America. Mr. Upjohn was president of the American Institute of Architects from 1857 to 1876. He died in Garrison’s, Putnam County, NY, on the 16th of August 1878.
