Henry Janeway Hardenbergh

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Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (February 6, 1847 - March 18, 1918) was a U.S. architect, who designed The Dakota luxury-apartment building; the Copley Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts; and the Plaza Hotel, both near Central Park in Manhattan.

Hardenbergh was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and apprenticed from 1865 to 1870 in an architecture firm in New York. In 1871, he set up his own practice. He obtained his first contracts—for Rutgers College in New Brunswick—through family connections: his great-great grandfather, Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, had been the first president of Rutgers College from 1785 to 1790, when it was still called "Queen's College".

He then got the contract to design the Vancorlear apartment building on West 55th Street in New York in 1879. The following year he was commissioned by Edward S. Clark, then head of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, to build a housing development (1880 - 1886). As part of this work, he designed the Dakota building. Subsequently, he received commissions to build the Waldorf (1893) and the Astoria (1897) hotels for the Astor Estate in New York; both were demolished in 1929 so that the Empire State Building could be erected.

He built several other buildings in similar styles, including the Plaza Hotel in New York (1905 -1907), and the Copley Plaza (1912) on Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts.

Hardenbergh lived for some time in Bernardsville, New Jersey and died 1918 in New York City. He is buried in Woodland Cemetery, in Stamford, CT.

[edit] Buildings

Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick Memorial Chapel at Rutgers college. Built in 1873. Has windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. ^[1]
Telegraph Building, built from 1882 to 1884^[2]
The Dakota, built in 1882.
Plaza Hotel, built from 1905 to 1907.^[3]
Trinity Episcopal Church, York Harbor, Maine, built in 1908.
The Waldorf Hotel - the hotel was demolished in 1929 to make space for the construction of Empire State Building.
The Astoria Hotel - same as the Waldorf.
Copley Plaza, built in 1912
Palmer Stadium (Princeton University), built in 1914^[4]