Joseph Worcester (1836-1913)

The Reverend Joseph Worcester was a Swedenborgian minister who arrived in San Francisco from Boston in 1869. Never fulfilling his desire to become an architect, he remained deeply interested in architecture throughout his life, becoming a leader and mentor for many young artists and professionals. His influence extended to a number of important Bay Area architects including Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, A. Page Brown, Bernard Maybeck, and Albert Schweinfurth.

The Joseph Worcester collection consists of 14 bound volumes of scrapbooks containing purchased photographs, clippings from the Architectural Review, and other magazines. Some volumes contain photographs of Italian artwork, including one volume of Venice. Two of the volumes are architectural monographs of the Ames Memorial Buildings in North Easton, Massachusetts, and Trinity Church in Boston.