HASTINGS, Thomas (1860-1929), a leading architect in New York City, N.Y. and in partnership with John M. Carrere (see list of works in Canada under Carrere & Hastings). He was born in New York City on 11 March 1860 and received his education in private schools there, and later studied architecture at Columbia University, completing a two-year course before leaving for Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the atelier of Louis J. Andre (see biography of Hastings in E.A. Delaire, Les Architectes Eleves de l’Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1907, 289-90).
After returning to New York in 1884, he joined the office of McKim, Mead & White, which was soon to become the largest and most important architectural firm in New York, but Hastings left after just one year, and formed a partnership with John M. Carrere, who had also graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1882. Together, they became one of the leading American architectural firms for the next 30 years until the accidental death of Carrere in 1911. In addition to over 200 projects in the United States, their accomplishments included the completion of over 20 major projects in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Kingston, Windsor and elsewhere, including institutional, commercial, industrial and residential works which were invariably designed in French Renaissance style that they favoured for many of their American projects. Their local supervising architect in Canada for many of these commissions was Eustace G. Bird of Toronto.
The firm of Carrere & Hastings received the A.I.A. Gold Medal in 1903, and Hastings himself received the coveted R.I.B.A. Gold Medal in London, England in 1922, and he was later named as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France. Hastings died in New York on 23 October 1929 (obituary New York Times, 23 October 1929, 29; obit and list of works in Canada in Construction [Toronto], xxii, Nov. 1929, 366; obit. Architectural Record [New York], lxvi, Dec. 1929, 596; obit. Architectural Forum [New York], li, Dec. 1929, 35; biog. National Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. 11, 1901, 326; biog. Dictionary of American Biography, 1937, Vol. 8, 388; biog. H. Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects, 1956, 269-71; biog. and list works in MacMillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 1982, vol. 1, 387-88).