Charles Phelps Taft Hall, Taft School, Watertown

Prominent on the campus of the Taft School, a boarding school in Watertown, is Charles Phelps Taft Hall. It was named for Charles Phelps Taft I (1843-1929), a lawyer and U.S. Representative, who was the bother of Taft School founder Horace Dutton Taft and U.S. President William Howard Taft. Built in 1929-1930, Charles Phelps Taft Hall was designed by the firm of James Gamble Rogers. A boys dormitory, the building also contains the Woolworth Faculty Room, which was formerly the school library. Charles Phelps Taft Hall connects seamlessly with other adjacent campus buildings to form a single unified structure with a shared architectural vocabulary and materials. This structure was begun in the early twentieth century with an Arts and Crafts/Gothic building designed by Bertram G. Goodhue. The complex was then expanded by James Gamble Rogers. A recently built section, which connects to Charles Phelps Taft Hall and complements its Collegiate Gothic style, is the John L. Vogelstein ’52 Dormitory, designed by Robert A.M. Stern.

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Charles Phelps Taft Hall (1929)
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