Francis Willford Fitzpatrick (April 9, 1863 – July 10, 1931) was an architect in Duluth, Minnesota, Washington, DC, Omaha, Nebraska, and Evanston, Illinois.

Fitzpatrick was an early advocate of fireproof buildings, and he was a frequent columnist in architectural trade publications on a variety of topics.

He immigrated to the United States in 1883 and began working as a drafter in the office of Minneapolis architect Leroy Buffington, remaining until 1887.

[10] By 1917, Fitzpatrick joined the Bankers Realty Investment Company in Omaha, Nebraska as head of the architectural department.

[11] The July 13, 1907, issue of The American Architect and Building News contained a letter from F. W. Fitzpatrick refuting the conclusions of the AIA titled, "The Origination of the Steel Skeleton Idea."

[13] Claims about Fitzpatrick's role in early skyscraper design were not actively contested, but the opinion of the AIA may have been more accurate.

In his research, historic preservationist Ed Zimmer counted over 200 articles and letters to the editor by Fitzpatrick on architecture and other topics.

[18]On Social Security (postal insurance), How better may we correct that national tendency [poverty] than by encouraging the laboring class, from which all the others derive their strength and are so largely recruited, to save money and be provident against an evil time or old age?

For Washington is already over-cluttered with Greek temples, bronze men on circus horses, gravestones stuck around our parks and streets and other such "artistic junk" in alleged memory of our warriors and other heroes.

[25]On the boring work of fellow architects, No, I am not clamoring for an inartistic solution of our practical problems, but I do vociferously pray and beseech my fellows to throw away their fetishes, break up their golden calf and false gods, the Axis, the Great Temple, the Antique, the abject worship of All that Has Been.

I do know that I was one of the three men who first sprung it upon an unsuspecting public and have built dozens of it, improved it, fought for it and have been closely knit with it for forty years, and so I am just silly enough, kind of Professor Tiernan-like, to defend the child-since grown into rather robust maturity-whether I be its sole or joint paternal relative.

An obituary at the time described his life,[1] Handsome, tall, graceful, eager, affectionate, generous, an extraordinary athlete, horseman and fencer.