William Barclay Parsons

William Barclay Parsons (April 15, 1859 – May 9, 1932) was an American civil engineer. He founded the firm that became Parsons Brinckerhoff, one of the largest American civil engineering firms.

William Parsons was the son of William Barclay Parsons and Eliza Livingston Glass. He was the great-grandson of Henry Barclay, second Rector of Trinity Church (Manhattan). In 1871 he went to school in Torquay, England, and for the four years following studied under private tutors while traveling in France, Germany and Italy.

Parsons received a bachelor's degree from Columbia College in 1879, and a second from Columbia's School of Mines in 1882. He later served as chairman of the University's board of trustees.

From 1882 to the end of 1885, he was in the maintenance of way department of the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad. His first books had to do with railroad problems (Turnouts; Exact Formulae for Their Determination, 1884, and Track, A Complete Manual of Maintenace of Way, 1886), and this interest in rail transportation continued throughout his life.

Parsons designed the Cape Cod Canal as Chief Engineer. He was also Chief Engineer of the New York Rapid Transit Commission, and as such responsible for the construction of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) subway line.

In 1900 he published an account of his work as Chief Surveyor of China's Canton–Hankou Railway. "...Parsons, acting for an American syndicate, accepted the direction of a survey of 1,000 miles of railway in China, primarily on the line from Hankow to Canton. The party passed through the then "closed province of Hu-nan, and the success of the entire venture depended not alone on the engineering skill but primarily upon the ability of the leader of the expedition to meet the extremely difficult diplomatic problems involved. Nevertheless, the mission was accomplished and the small group of American engineers, to the surprise of many of their friends, returned in safety. Parsons told the story of this adventure in An American Engineer in China" (1900).

"He was appointed to the Isthmian Canal Commission in 1904, and early in 1905 went to Panama as a member of the committee of engineers which subsequently reported in favor of a sea-level canal...In 1904 Parsons was also appointed, together with the famous British engineers Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir John Wolfe-Barry, to membership on a board to pass on the plans of the Royal Commission on London Traffic. He always considered his selection for the post one of the greatest of the many honors which came to him."

"In 1905, he had also been appointed chief engineer of the Cape Cod Canal. Completed in 1914, it joined Massachusetts Bay and Buzzards Bay and demonstrated that a canal without locks could be built between two bodies of water where considerable tidal differences existed."

A part of 158th Street in Queens was named after him as Parsons Boulevard, giving rise to the station names Parsons Boulevard and Jamaica Center – Parsons/Archer.