Background
Charles Coolidge Haight was born in 1841 in New York, United States, son of an Assistant Rector of Trinity Church.
Charles Coolidge Haight was born in 1841 in New York, United States, son of an Assistant Rector of Trinity Church.
With the intention of studying law the young man entered Columbia University but left in 1862 at the outbreak of the Civil War to join the Union forces.
Early in his career Mr. Haight was appointed architect of Trinity Church Corporation, and for a number of years had an office in the old Trinity Building. His first important commission was the old School of Mines at Columbia College, designed in the then popular Victorian style, and completed in 1874. That was followed by Hamilton Hall in 1880, a noted example of Collegiate Gothic, long since razed, and the old Library building completed in 1884. Continuing practice through the latter years of the century Mr. Haight became one of the city’s leading architects. His work comprised many well known public buildings of that period among which should be mentioned the first Cancer Hospital in New York, built between 1885 and 1890 at Central Park West; The Down Town Club, Pine and Cedar Streets, 1886; Trinity Parish Offices on Church Street, 1887; Ear and Eye Hospital; General Theological Seminary, 1887-90; Lawyers’ Title Insurance Building, Maiden Lane, 1894; Christ Church, Broadway at 71st Street; Church of the Holy Nativity, 1898; and St. Ignatius at 87th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Elsewhere he designed St. Stephen’s College at Annandale, N. Y. in 1894; Hobart College buildings at Geneva, N. Y., and Phelps and Vanderbilt Halls at Yale University.
Shortly after the turn of the century he was associated with Alfred W. Githens on a number of works including dormitories and laboratory for the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University.