Peter Bonnett Wight

Biography Wight was born and raised in New York City (his family lived at 93 West 13th Street) and graduated in 1855 from the Free Academy (founded in 1848 and located on East 23rd Street at Lexington Avenue). He had associations with critic Russell Sturgis and was mentored by Thomas R. Jackson, through whom he came to admire the work of American architect Richard Upjohn and the writings of English social reformer and art critic John Ruskin

Wight's career "flourished in the 1860s and early 1870s in New York, where he developed a decorative, historicist style that showed affinities to the work of European designers John Ruskin and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin." After the Chicago fire of 1871, Wight came to Chicago and developed his interest in modern technologies for fireproof construction, founding the Wight Fireproofing Co. by 1881. The firm "designed and manufactured hollow terra cotta tiles—impervious to fire and non heat-conductive—for construction."

Wight opened his own office in 1862 and produced designs for the "highly decorative and polychromatic" High Victorian Gothic National Academy of Design. ) and galleries for exhibiting art. The building's entrances from the college campus and Chapel Street reflected "the donor's wishes and symbolically uniting school and city." and Peter Bonnett Wight's only building at Yale University Manierre Building and Lennox Building New York Mercantile Library (1869) Montague Street between Clinton and Court Streets, Brooklyn, New York (demolished) Interior of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building (175 Broadway) New York Academy of Design 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue New York City