Background
William E. Haugaard was born in 1889 in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
William E. Haugaard was born in 1889 in Brooklyn, New York, United States.
He was educated in the city schools od Brooklyn, he studied architecture at Pratt Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Upon his return to this country Mr. Haugaard obtained a position in the drafting depart¬ment of the Isthmusian Canal Commission in New York and was employed there until the start of the World War in 1917. Following the Armistice he worked for successive periods with a number of the city’s leading firms, afterward practiced briefly under the firm name of Haugaard & Burnham.
He servier the head of the New York Commission of Architecture from 1928 to 1944, Mr. Haugaard was able fulfilled his duties in that important position. Comprising his major works were prisons, schools and hospitals, important examples of which were the Pilgrim State Hospital at Brentwood, N. Y.; Halloran Veterans’ Administration Hospital on Staten Island; Mattewan State Hospital for the Insane at Beacon; State Training School for Boys near Warwick; State Prison at Poughkeepsie; Massaic State School for Mental Defectives, and State Teachers’ College at Buffalo.
After 1942 Mr. Haugaard lived at Manhasset, Long Island and independently designed several buildings for the Long Island Park Commission, also the central office of the Brooklyn Board of Transportation. In 1947 he was appointed Chief of Planning for the New York Housing Authority.