Parris received numerous residential and commercial commissions, working in the fashionable style of architect Charles Bulfinch.
Like most housewrights of the era, he often used elements derived directly from English architectural books, or those published in the United States by Asher Benjamin.
Unfortunately, some of his designs were lost in the Great Fire of 1866, but early photographs and Parris' surviving drawings bespeak works of neoclassical artistry and taste.
But architect Benjamin Latrobe examined Parris' preliminary plans for the Wickham House, which resembled his previous Federal style works in Portland, and gave it a blistering review.
Latrobe's advice left a profound imprint on the future work of Parris, beginning with the building's revised design.
With Bulfinch's departure, Parris soon became the city's leading architect, and a proponent of what would be called "Boston Granite Style", with austere, monolithic stonework.
With the federal government as patron, Parris produced plans for numerous utilitarian structures, from storehouses to ropewalks, and was superintendent of construction at one of the nation's first drydocks, located at the Charlestown base.