Alexander Parris is the architect responsible for our beloved Federalist building known locally as the Moses P. Payson Mansion. This notable structure is the largest, most prominent building in the village. It is referenced on the State of New Hampshire Historical Marker in Bath. This commemorative plaque includes the year the town was settled, 1766, as well as a brief description of the town's most significant features.

Alexander Parris (1780–1852) was one of the most prominent architect-engineers of Massachusetts during the first half of the nineteenth century. For his works in Boston he became known as that city’s most renowned and prolific architect of the early 1800s. His works include the Bunker Hill Monument, Boston's Custom House Tower, Massachusetts General Hospital, Quincy Hall (Faneuil Hall Market), the Boston Public Library Annex, Boston Naval Shipyard, Watertown Arsenal, Boston's Sears Mansion, and over 100 other famous structures throughout the Eastern States. His works also include the Governor's Mansion in Virginia, the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire, and numerous lighthouses up and down the East Coast, from Mt. Desert Island, Maine, to Pensacola, Florida. The abundant works of Alexander Parris were recently documented in the Alexander Parris Project, funded by a grant that compiled his drawings, notes, instructions, and invoices detailing the building materials that were used at the time. In September of 2004, the State Library of Massachusetts completed the Alexander Parris Digital Project. The project, an effort to digitize Parris material held in the State Library and the collections of six Boston repositories, contains images and transcriptions of more than four hundred items.

The “Historical Notes of Bath, New Hampshire,” published in 1965 by the Bicentennial Committee on History, makes reference to the Payson Mansion, stating that “It is reputed to have been modeled on the Sears Mansion in Boston.” In fact, the Moses P. Payson Mansion was designed by Alexander Parris prior to his designing of the David Sears Mansion. The David Sears Mansion is located in Boston, on Beacon Hill, next to the residence of Charles Bulfinch (Parris’s mentor). Bulfinch became renowned as the architect of the former United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Having apprenticed under Bulfinch, Parris moved to Portland, Maine, in 1800. At that time, Portland almost rivaled Boston as the busiest port in New England. It quickly became known as the port on the East Coast where the most enterprising people of the day were making their fortunes. Moses P. Payson was one of those who made his fortune there. Shortly after Payson arrived in Bath, in 1798, he left to set up a law practice in Portland, Maine. Payson’s financial success was realized in association with the same wealthy elite for whom Alexander Parris built mansions.

The boom would end, however, with Jefferson's Embargo of 1807-1808, which lasted 14 months and devastated Portland's mercantile base. Merchants went bankrupt. The Portland Bank, its building designed by Parris, failed. By 1809, construction in the city had come to a halt. Subsequently, both Alexander Parris and Moses Payson left Portland in 1809 with fortunes and reputations intact. The Payson Mansion was undoubtedly commissioned by Moses P. Payson to Alexander Parris at that time and was built in 1809 - 1810. After completing the mansion for. Payson, Parris completed only two other mansions in brick, the Wickham House in Virginia, built in 1811-1812, and the Governor's Mansion in Virginia, built in 1812-1813. All three mansions, plus the David Sears Mansion in Boston (constructed of granite), possess the unique architectural signatures that can only be found in the works of Alexander Parris.

Because many of Alexander Parris’s earlier mansions in Portland were lost in the Great Fire of 1866, the threatened Moses P. Payson Mansion has now become A VERY IMPORTANT STRUCTURE TO SAVE. It remains one of the earliest, yet one of the most important, of Alexander Parris’s surviving mansions.

Only photographs and the architect's surviving drawings bespeak of those former works of his Neoclassical Federalist artistry, forever lost to fire. The unique architectural signatures of Alexander Parris that exist today in the Moses P. Payson Mansion (built 1809-1810) are living testimony to his earlier works in Portland, Maine (1801-1808), and remain an important link to his subsequent works-- the Wickham House (1811-1812) and Governor's Mansion (1812-1813), both in Richmond, Virginia and the double bow design he employed, first in the Payson Mansion and again in the David Sears Mansion in Boston (1818-1819).

Please continue to view the State and National Historical Recognition of the Moses Payson Mansion.

Built in 1810, the Moses P. Payson Mansion is the oldest building in the center of Lower Bath Village.

To understand the significance of this residence, it is helpful to recount a brief period overview of the historical importance, impact, and role of the professionals of the Town of Bath, and their influence within both the State of New Hampshire and national politics. Indeed manyrenowned personages established friendships with members of the Bath community, such as President Franklin Pierce, who visited Bath after retirement from his term as 14th President of the United States.

The town of Bath gained its greatest distinction from its reputation for having the highest number per capita of judges, lawyers, doctors, and educated professional residents of any town within the State of New Hampshire. For half a century it was considered the legal center of the North Country. In this distinguished small town during the early 1800s resided the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New Hampshire, members of the State Legislature, including the Senate and House of Representatives, twenty-two lawyers, five physicians, five ministers, and three editors, as well as bank presidents, Trustees of Dartmouth College, prominent businesspeople, and numerous professors, principals, and teachers at local schools and academies. Just seven of the families produced a second generation of fifteen lawyers, six physicians, and three ministers. To its credit, at the height of Bath's professional development, the town had four churches and thirteen school districts, including twelve schools and an academy with nine instructors and one hundred students.