Charles Allerton Coolidge

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. His partner Shepley died in 1903, and Rutan became disabled in 1912. In 1914 Coolidge dissolved the partnership with Rutan, who died soon after, and in 1915 formed new partnerships with George C. Shattuck in Boston and Charles Hodgdon in Chicago. In 1924, following Shattuck's death, the Boston firm became known as Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott.