Norman Isham

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Isham's diagram of the 1653 Mowry House, a stone-ender in Providence, Rhode Island from his 1895 book[1]

Norman Morrison Isham (1864-1943) was a prominent architectural historian, restorationist, author, and professor at Brown University and RISD.

Norman M. Isham was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but as a child his family moved to Providence, Rhode Island. Norman Isham attended Mowry and Goff's preparatory school and Brown University. He received a A.B. from Brown in 1886 and an A.M. in 1890. After graduation in 1886, Isham worked for architectural firm of Stone, Carpenter and Wilson and later Martin and Hall. He also served as an architecture instructor at Brown University.[2]

In 1899 Isham and Benjamin Wright created an architecture partnership which existed from 1912 to 1920 and 1923 to 1933. Isham also chaired the architectural department at the Rhode Island School of Design. He was a member of the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects and published several architecture texts, including "Early Rhode Island Houses" in 1895. Isham was well-known for his renovations of many prominent early Rhode Island and other New England houses, particularly, stone-enders.[3]

After Isham's wife, Elizabeth Barbour Ormsbee, died in 1917, he moved from Providence to Wickford, Rhode Island and constructed a permanent home there having summered in Wickford for many years. Norman Isham is buried in Wickford and has no descendants.[4]