Asher Benjamin was an American architect. He was born in 1773 in Hartland, Connecticut. Benjamin was a proponent of the Federal Style. He was an alderman in Boston. He is remembered for creating pattern books, books still available in bookstores. These pattern books were the first to bring architectural history, style, and geometry to builders in the field. His drawings were adapted from Great Britain to better suit New England. They provided details such as full house plans, including such details as circular staircases, doorways, fireplace mantels, dormer windows, pilasters, balusters and fences.
Architectural historian Talbot Hamlin writes: “…he, more than any other person is responsible for the character we roughly call ‘Late Colonial’; his moldings, his doors and windows, and his mantels and cornices decorate or at least inspire the decorations of numberless houses up and down the New England coast and in the New England river valleys.”
Leavitt Hovey House now Greenfield Public Library
1797, Greenfield, Massachusetts
First Deerfield Academy now Memorial Hall
1798, Deerfield, Massachusets
Old South Congregational Church
1798, Windsor, Vermont
Charles Street Meeting
1804, Boston, Massachusets
Old West Church
1806, Boston, Massachusets
Headquarters House
54-55 Beacon Street
1808, Boston, Massachusetts
First Parish Church
1809, Ashby, Massachusetts
Centre Church on the Green
1814, New Haven, Connecticut
Town House
1825, Peterborough, New Hampshire
Unitarian Church
1825, Peterborough, New Hampshire
Unitarian Church
1827, Nashua, New Hampshire
70-75 Beacon Street
1828, Boston, Massachussets
Asa Waters Mansion
1832, Millbury, Massachusetts
