Elbridge Boyden FAIA (1810–1898) was a prominent 19th-century American architect from Worcester, Massachusetts, who designed numerous civil and public buildings throughout New England and other parts of the United States.

The family moved to Orange, Massachusetts, where young Elbridge attended public schools.

Stratton owned two books by Asher Benjamin, which is where Boyden began his architectural training.

[2] In 1830 he began to work for Jonathan Cutting, a builder from Templeton, who had built the First Church in that town.

In 1847 he and Phineas Ball, a civil engineer, decided to take an office together in the old Central Exchange Building on Main Street.

In 1892 Boyden was one of the founders of the Worcester Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and served as its president from then until his death.

[6] Boyden was also a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, and served a term as vice-president of the Massachusetts Chapter.

[8] Boyden's earliest works were indicative of his training as a builder in the first half of the nineteenth century.

His earliest identified works, three houses from 1847, were all designed in the Greek Revival style, then solidly in the mainstream.

The earliest of Boyden's projects in this style was an unidentified block of houses on Harvard Street, in 1848.

It was during this period that Boyden rose to regional prominence, designing buildings all across the state of Massachusetts, in addition to works elsewhere in the northeast.

The first of these (1856), the Congregational Church at Brookfield, hangs on to the Romanesque, and has much in common with the slightly later work of John Stevens of Boston.

[16] He was also commissioned to build the 1858 Town House, which was originally the 1858 Townhouse, in Sherborn, Massachusetts, with a bequest from Thomas Dowse's will.

In 1857 Boyden & Ball designed the Front Street Theatre, adjacent to Horticultural Hall.

[24] Boyden & Ball also did a few more works further afield, including Denny Hall, Spencer's first high school in 1857,[25] Larchmont, the country home of Ransom C. Taylor,[26] and the Town House at Sherborn, both in 1858.

[34] The Spencer church was destroyed by fire, believed to have been started by a lightning strike, in June of 2023.

Boyden and his son designed many churches, mainly in the High Victorian Gothic style.

In 1873 Boyden made his first foray into Rhode Island, designing L'Eglise du Precieux Sang in Woonsocket, an American center of French Canadian culture.

[40] Several years later in 1888 he designed St. Paul's in Rutland, Vermont, which attempts to unite the High Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne styles.

In 1867 they competed for the design of Boynton Hall on the campus of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but lost to Earle & Fuller.

By the time Boyden & Son were commissioned to design the Town Hall in Orange in 1868, they had switched over to the Mansard Second Empire.

[52] Like his much earlier Taunton State Hospital, it was a sprawling medical campus, though now Queen Anne, not Italianate.

He built the massive Congress Hall in downtown Saratoga Springs,[12][53] and rebuilt the much older Fort William Henry Hotel in Lake George.

[12][56] Boyden's first commercial work with this partnership was a duo of office buildings in Keene, New Hampshire.

[12][19] In 1871 Boyden & Son designed the Savings Bank Block on Main Street in Fitchburg.

[12][23] A decade later, they designed the Bank Block on High Street in Clinton, a polychromatic Queen Anne office building.

[57] In 1888 he designed the Lamb Block at 41 Pleasant Street in Worcester, one of Boyden's only works in the Neo-Grec style.

Other works include: E. Boyden & Son also competed for the designs of the New York (1867)[67] and Georgia (1883)[68] state capitols, and the Worcester City Hall (1895),[69] but did not win.