Life and Career
Hardenbergh was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey of a German-American family, and apprenticed from 1865 to 1870 under George Frederick Bodley. In 1871, he set up his own practice. He obtained his first contracts – for Rutgers College in New Brunswick, New Jersey – 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. As part of this work, he designed the pioneering Dakota Apartments in Central Park West, novel in its location, very far north of the center of the city.
Subsequently, Hardenbergh received commissions to build the Waldorf (1893) and the adjoining Astoria (1897) hotels for William Waldorf Astor and Mrs. Astor, respectively. The two competing hotels were later joined together as the Waldorf-Astoria, which was demolished in 1929 for the construction of the Empire State Building.
Hardenbergh lived for some time in Bernardsville, New Jersey and died in 1918 in New York City. He is buried in Woodland Cemetery, in Stamford, Connecticut.
Read more about this topic: Henry Janeway Hardenbergh
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