William Henry Parkins | |
|---|---|
 Parkins, c. 1885 | |
| Born | June 1, 1836 Nassau, New York, United States |
| Died | January 29, 1894 (aged 57) Calhoun County, Georgia, United States |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Buildings | Kimball House Shrine of the Immaculate Conception |
William Henry Parkins (June 1, 1836 – January 29, 1894) was an American architect best known for his work in Atlanta during the late 1800s.
Born in New York in 1836, Parkins moved to South Carolina in the Antebellum era and was a Union sympathizer during the American Civil War. He spent over a year trying to travel across the South to make it back to his home state, and his journey was later adapted into a novel by noted author Archibald Clavering Gunter. Following the war, he moved to Atlanta and was the first and, for a time, only architect in the city. He received commissions for several major projects in the city and surrounding area, primarily for religious buildings, and some of his most notable works include the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the Kimball House. Later in his career, he formed a partnership with Alexander Campbell Bruce and hired Thomas Henry Morgan as a drafter. Following his retirement in 1882, the two of them formed the architectural firm of Bruce & Morgan, which designed many academic buildings in the region. Parkins retired to a farm in Calhoun County, Georgia, and died in 1894. A 2013 article in the New Georgia Encyclopedia calls him "the most significant architect practicing in Georgia in the immediate decades following the Civil War".[1]