Richard Upjohn (1802-1878) was an English-born American architect whose expressive vocabulary of Gothic design helped to make this style popular in the mid-19th century.

Richard Upjohn was born in Shaftesbury, Dorsetshire, on Jan. 22, 1802. At the age of 27 he went to America with his wife and son. Upjohn became a skilled cabinetmaker before entering the profession of architecture, which explains his penchant for precise, meticulous architectural decoration. Detailed Gothic buildings probably gave him more pleasure to design and construct than the currently popular Greek revival style, whose proportions he could approve but whose paucity of decoration was to him absurd.

In 1830 Upjohn settled in New Bedford, Mass., where he was listed as a carpenter and worked in the office of an oil and lumber merchant. Within 3 years Upjohn began designing buildings. The first was a house for Isaac Farrar in Bangor, Maine (1833-1836), in the prevailing Greek revival...