William Robert Ware (May 27, 1832 – June 9, 1915), born in Cambridge, Massachusetts into a family of the Unitarian clergy, was an American architect,[1] author, and founder of two important American architectural schools.

Their Boston-area designs include Harvard's Memorial and Weld Halls, the Episcopal Divinity School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the fountain at the Providence Athenaeum in Providence, Rhode Island, the Walter Hunnewell house (1875) at the Hunnewell estate in Wellesley (then West Needham), and the Ether Monument at the Boston Public Garden.

Architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee apprenticed under Ware and Van Brunt after graduating MIT in 1869.

[3][circular reference] In 1881, Ware and Van Brunt amicably dissolved their partnership, and Ware moved to New York City to found the School of Architecture at Columbia University, which began as the Architecture Department in the Columbia School of Mines.

Ware also dabbled briefly in voting systems He conducted a demonstration STV election at Harvard University in 1871.