Charles Allerton Coolidge

The Art Institute of Chicago, designed by Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge and completed in 1893.

Charles Allerton Coolidge (1858–1936) was an American architect best known as a partner in the architecture firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge of Boston and Chicago, successors to the firm of architect Henry Hobson Richardson and one of the best-known architecture firms in the United States. Coolidge was also senior partner in that firm's successors, Coolidge & Shattuck and Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott of Boston and Coolidge & Hodgdon of Chicago.

Life and career Charles Allerton Coolidge was born November 30, 1858, in Boston to David Hill Coolidge, a lawyer, and Isabella (Shurtleff) Coolidge. He was educated in the private school of John P. Hopkinson and entered Harvard College in 1877, graduating in 1881. After three months with Ware & Van Brunt he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a special course in architecture. After another year with Van Brunt he moved to the studio of Henry Hobson Richardson in Brookline in March 1883. When Richardson died in April 1886 Coolidge and two other senior employees, George Foster Shepley and Charles Hercules Rutan, took charge of the studio and its uncompleted work. In June 1886 the three formed a formal partnership, Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, to succeed to Richardson's practice, and in 1887 moved the office to Boston. Together, they developed one of the largest American architectural firms of its era.

In 1892 the firm was awarded the commission to design the Art Institute of Chicago. To execute this and other projects the firm opened a second office in Chicago, under the direct management of Coolidge. Coolidge lived in Chicago until 1900, when he returned to Boston. In 1924, following Shattuck's death, the Boston firm became known as Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott. Coolidge retired from the Chicago partnership in 1930, but continued to direct the Boston firm until his death.

Major works completed by his firms during his lifetime included the Stanford University campus (1891 and 1906), the Ames Building (1893), South Station (1899) and Boston Children's Hospital (1914) in Boston, Art Institute of Chicago (1893) and Chicago Cultural Center (1897) and Hutchinson Commons (1903) and the Harper Memorial Library (1912) of the University of Chicago in Chicago, the John Carter Brown Library of Brown University (1904), the Harvard Medical School (1906) and Harvard Memorial Church (1932) for Harvard University and the Rockefeller University campus and New York Hospital (1932) in New York City. Abroad they designed the United States pavilion at the Paris Exposition (1900), the American College for Girls campus (1914) in Istanbul and the Peking Union Medical College campus (1920) in Beijing, Julia (Shepley) Coolidge died in 1935. He died April 1, 1936, in Locust Valley, New York, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Rentschler.

In 1900 Coolidge was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his work at the Paris Exposition. He also served as a lecturer in architecture from 1906 to 1908 and 1912 to 1913, a member of the planning board from 1921 and a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1922 to 1928.