William D. Warner

The Woonsocket Harris Public Library in Woonsocket, completed in 1974. Winston Clock Tower of the Rhode Island School of Design, completed in 1987. Waterplace Park, completed in 1994, and surrounding buildings. The John Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts of Rhode Island College, completed in 2000. The Providence River Bridge, completed in 2007, with the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in the foreground. William D. Warner (1929–2012) was an American architect and urban planner in practice in Providence and Exeter, Rhode Island from 1959 to 2012.

Life and career William Diaz Warner was born July 14, 1929, in New Rochelle, New York to Russell E. Warner and Alice C. (Diaz) Warner. He was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning a BArch in 1956 and an MArch in 1957. While in school he worked for acoustical engineers Bolt, Beranek and Newman and architects The Architects Collaborative. After graduation he joined the staff of the City Plan Commission in Providence, Rhode Island, and was project director for a preservation plan for College Hill executed in association with the Providence Preservation Society. Published in 1959, their report, College Hill: A Demonstration Study of Historic Area Renewal, was influential in both local and national preservation practices. An important unexecuted project was a National Endowment for the Arts-funded competition design for the Provincetown Playhouse in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Warner won the competition but the building was never built.

When reviewing Warner's Pierce School in Brookline, Massachusetts, Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell described it as a "kind of inaccurate imitation of a Bavarian castle" that is nonetheless a "relaxed and personal" design that, rather than following Sullivan's maxim that "form follows function," embraces the "fact that form also has all kinds of symbolic meanings for all kinds of people."

Warner is best remembered for his role in the reconfiguration of downtown Providence towards the end of the twentieth century. In 1981 a group of three architects, Friedrich St. Florian, Irving B. Haynes and Warner, devised the original scheme for what would become Waterplace Park. This was in response to the recently approved Capital Center plan, which the three saw as offering nothing meaningful to the public realm. This led to a formal study by Warner's firm in 1984 and ultimately Waterplace Park was completed in 1994. For his work at Waterplace Warner was awarded a 1997 Presidential Award for Design Excellence from President Bill Clinton. Warner also had a role in other important elements of Providence's so-called "Renaissance," including the Manchester Street Generating Station repowering, completed in 1996, and the Providence River Bridge, completed in 2007. Warner was active in his practice, William D. Warner Architects and Planners, until his death. Warner was a 2003 recipient, with Barnaby Evans, of the Kevin Lynch Award and was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 2004.

Personal life Warner was married to Margaret Hansen. He had five children from two previous marriages. In 2013 his work was the subject of a posthumous exhibition organized by the Rhode Island chapter of the AIA. Westminster Unitarian Church, East Greenwich, Rhode Island (1963) Medical Research Labs, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island (1964–65) Church of the Messiah, Foster, Rhode Island (1966) North Kingstown Public Safety Building, Wickford, Rhode Island (1971) Moshassuck Square Apartments, Providence, Rhode Island (1972) Mount Hope Court Apartments, Providence, Rhode Island (1972) Waterville Valley Elementary School, Waterville Valley, New Hampshire (1974) St. Augustine Episcopal Church, Kingston, Rhode Island (1982) John Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts, Rhode Island College, Providence, Rhode Island (1998–2000) Providence River Bridge, Providence, Rhode Island (2006–07)