Background
Charles Clauder was born in 1872 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. A son of German emigrants who settled in the city in their youthful years.
Charles Clauder was born in 1872 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. A son of German emigrants who settled in the city in their youthful years.
He studied architecture at the School of Industrial Art at the Pennsylvania Museum.
At the age of sixteen he entered the local office of I. P. Chandler, and continued as draftsman there, except for a brief engagement with the New York firm of Schickel & Ditmars, until 1893. Through seven ensuing years he was employed successively in various Philadelphia offices, Wilson Brothers & Company, Walter Cope, and Horace Trumbauer, and in 1900 joined the firm of Frank Day & Brother. A decade later he was taken into partnership, and following the retirement of H. Kent Day in 1913, continued practice under the name of Day & Klauder until the death of Frank Day five years later, thereafter maintained an independent office.
The firm won a national reputation for college buildings designed in an adaptation of the Gothic, and served both as architects and in an advisory capacity on many well known educational institutions, among them Princeton University, Penn State College, and the University of Pittsburgh. Under his own name Mr. Klauder continued distinguished work in the same field of design, and at the time of his death left the stamp of a great Gothicist on many buildings.
He was appointed Executive Architect on the Holder group at Princeton; the Cathedral of Learning, Heins Memorial Chapel, and the Stephen Foster Memorial (built in 1937) at the University of Pittsburgh; buildings at Cornell University; Wellesley College; Albion College in Michigan; Staunton Military Academy, Va., Drew University, Madison, N. J.; eighteen buildings at the Concordia Theological Seminary in St. Lous prior to 1928; the Peabody Museum at Yale University, 1925, and other institutional buildings.
In addition to collegiate work Mr. Klauder designed various types of buildings in Philadelphia and environs, including the Germantown branch of the Public Library; Second Church of Christ Scientist at Germantown; Council Building for the Boy Scouts of America, and a number of distinctive residences.