Priest, John Weller | Biographical Dictionary of Architects in Canada

PRIEST, John Weller (1825-1859) opened an office in Brooklyn in 1849 and moved to Manhattan in 1854. In May 1854 he was commissioned to prepare a picturesque carpenter Gothic design for St. Anne's Anglican Church on CAMPOBELLO ISLAND, N.B. A full set of original drawings for the church, signed by Priest, have survived and can be found in the E. Leander Higgins Collection at the Folger Library, Univ. of Maine, at Orono, Maine, USA (inf. Roger G. Reed, Maine Historical Preservation Commission). Preist was one of the founding members of the American Inst. of Architects, and nominated as a Fellow of that organization in 1857. He played an important role in the development of the ecclesiological movement of architectural design in mid-19th C. America, and his work is often favourably compared to that of Richard Upjohn, Frank Wills, and John Notman (Phoebe Stanton, The Gothic Revival and American Church Architecture, 1968, 187, 302-04, illus.). Priest died in New York in 1859.