Early life
Waterhouse was natural on the 19th July 1830 in Liverpool, the boy of moneyed mill-with Quaker parents. He was educated at a Quaker process Grove School in Tottenham near London. He exposed architecture under Richard Lane in Manchester, and spent lot of his youth travelling within Europe and studying around France, Italy and Germany. Upon his go to to England, Alfred install his have architectural practice inside Manchester.

Waterhouse continued to practice inside Manchester for Xii years, until moving his practice to London within 1865. Waterhouse's earliest commissions were for farm buildings, however his profits as a designer of public buildings was assured within 1859 when he won the open competition for the Manchester Assize Courts. This act nin sole showed his ability to project the complicated building on the big shell, however as well marked him retired as a champion of the Gothic cause.

London practice
Inside 1865 Waterhouse was one of the designer selected to compete for the Royal Courts of Justice. A newly University Club was undertaken in 1866. Around 1868 and nine years after his operate on a Manchester Assize Courts, a second competition secured for Waterhouse the project of Manchester Town Hall, where he was take the breath to show a unwaveringly & additional original treating of the Gothic style. A equivalent month he was taking a share inside rebuilding part of Caius College, Cambridge; this was not his foremost university act, for he experienced already worked in Balliol College, Oxford in 1867, and a newly buildings of the Cambridge Union Society, in 1866.

At Caius, away from deference to the Renaissance treatment of the older parts of the college, ths Gothic element was on purpose mingled using classic detail, when Balliol & Pembroke College, Cambridge, which followed in 1871, are average of the style of his mid career by owning Gothic tradition tempered by single taste & by adaptation to modern needs. Girton College, Cambridge, a building of simpler nature and severity, dates originally from either a equivalent time (1870), but has been sporadically enlarged by farther buildings. 2 crucial household works were undertaken around 1870 and 1871 respectively -- Eaton Hall in Cheshire for the Duke of Westminster, and Heythrop Hall, Oxfordshire, the latter the restoration of the fairly nonindulgent classic nature and severity.

Waterhouse received, forgoing competition, a commission to build a Natural History Museum in South Kensington (1873 - 1881), a project which marks an epoch in the modern apply of terracotta and which was to become his better known act. Waterhouse's more works inside London involved a National Liberal Club (a survey around Renaissance composition), University College Hospital, the Surveyors' Institution inside London's Neat George Street (1896), and a Jenner Institute of Preventive Medicine in Chelsea (1895).

From either a late 1860s, Waterhouse lived in the Reading area and was responsible many important buildings there. These involved his have residences of Foxhill House (1868) and Yattendon Court (1877), together with Reading Town Hall (1875) and Reading School (1870). Foxhill Home is however inside utilize per University of Reading, as come his Whiteknights House (built for his father) and East Thorpe House (built in 1880 for Alfred Palmer).

For the Prudential Assurance Company, Waterhouse designed many agents, including their Holborn Blocks head professional within Holborn and branch offices within Southampton and Leeds. He besides designed agents for the National Provincial Bank in Piccadilly (1892) and around Manchester. A Liverpool Infirmary was Waterhouse's largest hospital; and St. Mary's Hospital in Manchester, the Alexandra Hospital in Rhyl, and extensive additions at the Nottingham General Hospital, also involved him. He was required inside the series of works for the Victoria University, of which he was made LL.D. inside 1895.

More training buildings designed by Waterhouse include Yorkshire College, Leeds (1878), the Victoria Building for the Liverpool University College (now University of Liverpool) (1885), St Paul's School in Hammersmith (1881); and the Central Technical College in London's Exhibition Road (1881).

Among works non already mentioned come Salford Prison, St Margaret's School in Bushey, the Metropole Hotel in Brighton, Hove Town Hall; Alloa Town Hall; St. Elisabeth's church in Reddish; the Oxford Union buildings; Darlington town clock and market hall; the Weigh House chapel in Mayfair, and Hutton Hall in Yorkshire.

Recognition
Waterhouse became the fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1861, and was President from either 1888 to 1891. He found a grand prix for architecture at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and the "Rappel" within 1878. In a equivalent month he received the Royal gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, & was mass produced an associate of the Royal Academy, of which body he became the fully member within 1885 and treasurer within 1898. He was besides the member of the academies of Vienna (1869), Brussels (1886), Antwerp (1887), Milan (1888) and Berlin (1889), and the corresponding member of the Institut de France (1893). When 1886 he wwhen constantly called upon to work as tax assessor around architectural competitions, & was the member of the international jury appointed to adjudicate on the designs for the west front of Milan Cathedral in 1887. Around 1890 he served as architectural member of the Royal Commission on the projected enlargement of Westminster Abbey as a place of burial.

Later life
Waterhouse retired from either architecture around 1902, having expert inside partnership sustaining his boy, Paul Waterhouse, from 1891. He died at Yattendon Court on the 22nd August 1905.