William Ralph Emerson

William Ralph Emerson (March 11, 1833 – November 23, 1917) was an American architect.

A cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William was born in Alton, Illinois, and trained in the office of Jonathan Preston (1801–1888), an architect–builder in Boston.

He formed an architectural partnership with Preston (1857–1861), practiced alone for two years, then partnered with Carl Fehmer (1864–1873).

He is best known for his Shingle Style houses and inns, many of them in Bar Harbor, Maine.

[1] Emerson was a friend of the Boston painter William Morris Hunt, who painted a portrait of Emerson's son Ralph, shown at an exhibition of Hunt's work at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1880.