William Gibbons Preston was an American architect who practiced during the last third of the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth. Educated at Harvard University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he was active in Boston, New York, Rhode Island, Ohio, New Brunswick and Savannah, Georgia, where he was brought by George Johnson Baldwin to design the Chatham County courthouse. Preston stayed in Savannah for several years during which time designed the original Desoto Hotel, the Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory and 20 other distinguished public buildings and private homes. He began his professional career working for his father, the builder and architect Jonathan Preston (1801–1888), upon his return to the United States from the École in 1861, and was the sole practitioner in the office from the time his father retired c. 1875 until he took John Kahlmeyer as a partner in about 1885.
"Bungalow at Monument Beach, Massachusetts" (1879) from the March 27, 1880 edition of American Architect and Building News
Images of the exterior and main hall of the Rogers Building, 1864, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (The Walker Building is in the background in the upper view.)
Savannah Cotton Exchange
Charles M. Russell house, 1890
Poetter Hall is an academic building in Savannah, Georgia, United States. Designed by William G. Preston and completed in 1893, the building originally served as a National Guard Armory and was called the Savannah Volunteer Guards Armory. In 1979, the building underwent an extensive renovation and became the first academic building for the Savannah College of Art and Design.
The building in 1902