Sophia Hayden Bennett

Sophia Hayden (October 17, 1868 – February 3, 1953) was an American architect and first female graduate of the four-year program

Life

Early life

Sophia Gregoria Hayden was born in Santiago, Chile. Her mother, Elezena Fernandez, was from Chile, and her father, George Henry Hayden, was an American dentist from Boston. Hayden had a sister and two brothers. When she was six, she was sent to Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, to live with her paternal grandparents, George and Sophia Hayden, and attended the Hillside School. While attending West Roxbury High School (1883–1886) she found an interest in architecture. After graduation Hayden's family moved to Richmond, Virginia, but she returned to Boston for college. a fellow female architect at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hayden's work was influenced by MIT professor Eugène Létang. The Woman's Building was the nation's most prominent design competition for women at that time. Hayden based her design on her thesis project, "Renaissance Museum of Fine Arts," a grand two-story structure with center and end pavilions, multiple arches, columned terraces and other classical features, reflecting her Beaux-Art training. It became a controversial structure as many women objected to having their work in a separate structure.

During construction, Hayden's design principles were compromised by incessant changes demanded by the construction committee, spearheaded by socialite Bertha Palmer, who eventually fired Hayden from the project. Hayden appeared at the inaugural celebration and had published accounts of support by her fellow architects.

Her frustration eventually was pointed to as typifying women's unfitness for supervising construction, although many architects sympathized with her position and defended her. In the end the rifts were made up, perhaps, and Hayden's building received an award for "Delicacy of style, artistic taste, and geniality and elegance of the interior." Within a year or two, virtually all the Fair buildings were destroyed. Frustrated with the way she had been treated, Hayden may or may not have decided to retire from architecture, but she did not work again as an architect.

Retirement In 1900, Hayden married a portrait painter and, later, interior designer, William Blackstone Bennett, in Winthrop, Massachusetts. A stepdaughter, Jennie "Minnie" May Bennett, was from William Blackstone Bennett's prior marriage. The couple had no children. William died of pneumonia on April 11, 1909.

Although Hayden designed a memorial for women's clubs in the U.S. in 1894, it was never built. She worked as an artist for years and lived a quiet life in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Hayden died at the Winthrop Convalescent Nursing Home in 1953 of pneumonia after suffering a stroke.

In popular culture Hayden is mentioned in Erik Larson's 2003 novel The Devil in the White City. Hayden is played by Katherine Cunningham in the eleventh episode of the first season of the TV series Timeless (2017), although she didn't stay at H.H. Holmes' hotel.

Works or publications "Abstract of Thesis: Sophia G. Hayden, 1890." Technology Architectural Review 3 (September 31, 1890): 28,30. "The Woman's Building." In Rand McNally and Company's A Week at the Fair, 180. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1893.