Sophia Hayden Bennett (October 17, 1868 – February 3, 1953) was the first woman to receive an architecture degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Bennett was born in Santiago, Chile. Her mother was South American and her father American. When she was six she was sent to Boston to live with her grandparents. In high school she found an interest for architecture. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 with honors with a degree in architecture. She is best known for designing the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition, designing the building when she was just 21. She received $1,000 at the time for the design, when male architects earned three times as much. Bennett died in 1953 in Winthrop, Massachusetts.
After completing her studies Hayden had a really hard time finding employment as an architect because she was a woman so instead of becoming an architect she became a drawing teacher at Boston High School. It was not until 1891 when she had the opportunity to do something with architecture. This opportunity was a design competition for women to design Women's Building for the world's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois from 1892-1893. Hayden won the competition. Hayden's building received an award for "Delicacy or style, artistic taste, and geniality and elegance of the interior wall" Despite her success and the fact that she won, critics thought that the building looked feminine and for that reason the building was torn down. Hayden frustrated with the way she had been treated decided to retired from architecture. Eight years later she married an artist, William Blackstone Bennett. After retiring she lived a quite life in Boston, Massachusetts until her death in 1953.