Charles Klauder architectural drawings of Penn State buildings

Charles Zeller Klauder was born in Philadelphia in 1872. In 1887 he began working for the Philadelphia architect T.P. Chandler, and by 1891 he had won the silver medal of the Philadelphia T-Square Club. He worked for various firms such as Wilson Brothers, Walter Cope, and Horace Trumbauer before settling as the chief draftsman for Frank Miles Day and Brother in 1900. The firm's name changed to Charles Z. Klauder in 1927 and remained so until Klauder died in 1938. Klauder, one of the leading architects of his time, co-authored College Architecture in America with Herbert C. Wise, in 1929. He was the collegiate gothic architect who transformed many American campuses from disparate collections of stylish buildings into memorable places with distinct identities. He is known for being the creator of background buildings, the warp of the tapestry of great American college campuses. Klauder believed that each campus should reflect its own unique combination of distinguishing factors, and that diversity was essential. Some campuses he worked on were Brown University, Princeton University, and the University of Colorado at Boulder.