Archives West Finding Aid

Architect Jamieson Kirkwood Parker was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1895. He was educated at the Portland Academy and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a degree in architecture in 1912. He worked in the office of Portland architect A. E. Doyle and later with New York City architect H. Van Buren Magonigle. After serving in World War I he returned to Portland, where he worked again for Doyle and later for Folger Johnson. Starting his own practice in 1921, Parker came to be known for his residential and church architecture. Among his most notable projects were the First Unitarian Church (1924) and St. Mark's Episcopal Church (1925), both in Portland.

With the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, Parker's practice dwindled. In 1934 he served as the regional director of the Historic American Building Survey, and after the program's elmination he took the post of State Director of the Federal Housing Administraion in 1935. He died in 1939 after a period of ill health. He was survived by his wife, Margaret Biddle Parker, whom he had married in 1923, and by three children.