Charles A. Coolidge

Architect Charles Allerton Coolidge, FAIA, was a founding partner of the firm Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge in 1886. After graduating from Harvard University in 1881 with additional study in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Coolidge worked for H. H. Richardson before forming his own office. His firm would later undergo several name changes: Coolidge & Shattuck; Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott; and Coolidge & Hodgdon. Coolidge was known for his design of academic buildings and libraries at Stanford, Yale, and Brown Universities; the hospital and medical schools at Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago; and for the law and medical schools and Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. He also designed the Art Institute of Chicago and that city’s public library, and served as the consulting architect for Constantinople College in Turkey. He was a trustee of both the American Academy in Rome and the Art Institute of Chicago. For his work on the Paris Exposition of 1899, Coolidge was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of arts by Harvard University in 1906.