BOYINGTON, William Warren (1818-1898) practised in Chicago, Illinois and is best known there for his designs for churches, commercial buildings and luxury hotels erected before and after the Great Fire of Chicago in October 1871. In Canada, he prepared the plans for a refined and accomplished Second Empire design for the Windsor Hotel, Peel Street, MONTREAL, QUE., 1876-78; demol. c. 1960 (Daily Witness [Montreal], 21 April 1875, 1, descrip. and illus.; Evening Star [Montreal], 12 April 1875, 3, detailed descrip.; and 20 April 1875, 1, descrip.; and 15 Jan. 1877, 3, descrip.; and 8 March 1877, 3, descrip.; and 28 Jan. 1878, 3, detailed architectural descrip.; Gazette [Montreal], 5 June 1876, 2, descrip.; and 29 Jan. 1878, 2, descrip.; C. Cameron & J. Wright, Second Empire Style in Canadian Architecture, 1980, 118-9, illus.).
In 1882 he received the commission for the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Portage Avenue at Donald Street, WINNIPEG, MAN. (Manitoba Daily Free Press [Winnipeg], 31 May 1882, 8, descrip.; 19 Jan. 1883, 8, descrip.). The latter was a more reserved and less pretentious design than the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, but when completed it was the largest hotel in Winnipeg and possessed many of the distinctive characteristics of the Second Empire style.
In Chicago, Boyington designed the Grand Pacific Hotel (1871), the Sherman House Hotel (1869), the Metropolitan Hotel, the Massasoit House Hotel, and the Chicago Water Tower on North Michigan Avenue (1869) which was one of the few structures to survive the devastating city fire of 1871. He died at Highland Park, Chicago on 16 October 1898 (obit. and list of works Daily Inter-Ocean [Chicago], 17 Oct. 1898, 9; obit Chicago Daily Tribune, 17 Oct. 1898, 9; obit. Evening Journal [Ottawa], 17 Oct. 1898, 1; biography and list of works in the United States Biographical Dictionary - Illinois Volume, 1876, 372-73; Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 1982, Vol. 1, 267).