George Henry Warren (1920-2022)
Architect & Preservationist, of Paradise Avenue, Middletown, R.I.
He was born in New York City. He graduated from Brooks School (1939) in North Andover, Massachusetts and Harvard College (Bachelor of Arts, 1943). Having learned celestial navigation, during World War II he served as a navigator on the Pan Am Boeing 314 Atlantic Clipper, the legendary flying boat used by the U.S. Navy to carry personnel and equipment across the Atlantic to Europe. He learned the identity of more than 50 stars, planets and interstellar lights in his role as a navigator, and studying the night sky became a lifelong passion. After the war, following in the footsteps of his great-uncles - Whitney Warren and Lloyd Elliot Warren - he pursued a career in architecture and design. He spent a year at Columbia School of Architecture in New York City before returning to Harvard, graduating (1953) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with dual degrees as a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Architecture.
In New York City, he worked for a various firms including Alfred Easton Poor, Philip Johnson, McKim, Mead & White, and Sherwood, Mills & Smith in Stamford, Connecticut, before pursuing private practice in Newport where his mother founded the Preservation Society of Newport County in 1945. He served as a trustee from 1977 to 1995, a member of the Executive, Planning and Curatorial committees, and Chairman of the Architectural and Properties committees. He spearheaded the acquisition and renovation of the Isaac Bell House in 1994 and in 2005 he received the Society's Laurel Award for volunteerism and Antiquarian Award (2019) for his long service when he was described as: “A Harvard man... unabashed champion of historic preservation and lifelong admirer of Newport and Aquidneck Island." In 1949, he married Mary Morton Haig and they brought up three sons (George, Quentin and Peter). They lived in a house built to his own design in 1977 on a swath of land off Paradise Avenue looking south and east over Second Beach and Middletown’s Norman Bird Sanctuary that he supported along with the Newport Hospital.
In New York City, he worked for a various firms including Alfred Easton Poor, Philip Johnson, McKim, Mead & White, and Sherwood, Mills & Smith in Stamford, Connecticut, before pursuing private practice in Newport where his mother founded the Preservation Society of Newport County in 1945. He served as a trustee from 1977 to 1995, a member of the Executive, Planning and Curatorial committees, and Chairman of the Architectural and Properties committees. He spearheaded the acquisition and renovation of the Isaac Bell House in 1994 and in 2005 he received the Society's Laurel Award for volunteerism and Antiquarian Award (2019) for his long service when he was described as: “A Harvard man... unabashed champion of historic preservation and lifelong admirer of Newport and Aquidneck Island." In 1949, he married Mary Morton Haig and they brought up three sons (George, Quentin and Peter). They lived in a house built to his own design in 1977 on a swath of land off Paradise Avenue looking south and east over Second Beach and Middletown’s Norman Bird Sanctuary that he supported along with the Newport Hospital.
