William E. Worthen graduated from Harvard College in 1838 and commenced the profession of civil engineering under the tutorship of Samuel Morse Felton, an assistant in the office of the then prominent engineer Colonel Loammi Baldwin Jr.[1] The day after graduation from Harvard Worthen started working under the direction of George Rumford Baldwin measuring the flow of the water used at the Merrimac Mills.

[2] In 1840 Worthen was with George Washington Whistler on the Albany and West Stockbridge Railroad, commencing with the preliminary surveys of the road and remaining until its completion, 7 miles of the construction work having been under his immediate charge.

He reported on the water supply of Lowell and for a time was in charge of the cotton mills and machine shops of the Boston Manufacturing Company as Acting Superintendent.

He designed and built the dam across the Bronx River at West Farms, and then, opening an office in New York City, supplemented his architectural and engineering practice by constructive iron work and steam heating for buildings.

To a remarkable power of rapid generalization seemingly incompatible with painstaking accuracy he united an almost intuitive perception of the requisite expedients of detail and design.

His quickness in technical analysis, combined with the before mentioned qualities, has rendered possible the successful completion of many important works with which, owing to a forgetfulness of self his name is scarcely associated A retentive memory to sift and treasure the facts in science and art which extended study, had opened up to him the tact of judicious selection and application originality and boldness at times bordering on audacity and a positiveness that silenced all opposition have been the characteristic features of his long practice.

Whatever Mr Worthen may have owed to study or experience in the arts of construction his acknowledged genius, using the word in its strictest sense, stamped him as an engineer nascitur non fit.

[2]Mr Worthen possessed an overflowing vein of wit and humor which served to temper the asperities not unusual in professional debates, this coupled with a kindliness of disposition which could see nothing in others to speak of but what was commendable led to his friends being numbered only by his acquaintance.