Oakes Angier Ames

Oakes Angier Ames (April 15, 1829 – September 19, 1899) was a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist in the Ames family of North Easton, Massachusetts. His brother Oliver Ames was Governor of Massachusetts.

Ames was the oldest son of Oakes Ames, a major force behind the Union Pacific Railroad, and Eveline O. Gilmore. He became a partner in the family's shovel factory in 1863, and in 1877 became its president.

Ames' legacy to North Easton can still be seen in Queset House, his home beside the Queset Brook. The house's front portion design was drawn in 1854 from a plan by noted architect Andrew Jackson Downing (who died in 1852) and John Ames Mitchell, (a first cousin of Oakes Angier,) designed the rear in 1872. The famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted planned its grounds and also, in consultation with Ames, created The Rockery nearby.

Together with his family, Ames commissioned Olmsted and architect H. H. Richardson to create a remarkable set of buildings and landscapes in North Easton, including:

• Ames Free Library
• Ames Gate Lodge
• Oakes Ames Memorial Hall
• Old Colony Railroad Station
• The Rockery

Selected works

• Oakes Ames and the Credit mobilier, Boston, F. Wood, printer, 1880.

References

• John N. Ingham, Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders, Greenwood Press, 1983, page 16. ISBN 0-313-23907-X.
• Dell Upton, Architecture in the United States, Oxford University Press, 1998, page 95. ISBN 0-19-284217-X.
• Forest Systems: Queset House