Waid, Daniel Everett

WAID, Daniel Everett (1864-1939) of New York City designed the sumptuous and classically inspired headquarters building for the Metropolitan Life Assurance Co., Wellington Street at Bank Street, OTTAWA, ONT. in 1925-26 (Ottawa Journal, 23 Dec. 1924, 1 & 2, descrip.; C.R., xxxix, 2 Dec. 1925, 1145-46; xl, 29 Dec. 1926, 193-4, illus. & descrip.; Ottawa Journal, 25 March 1927, 17, illus. & descrip.; Const., xx, April 1927, 106-16, illus. & descrip.; Architectural Forum [New York], liii, Aug. 1930, 143-6, illus. & descrip.; Andrew Waldron, Exploring the Capital: An Architectural Guide to the Ottawa-Gatineau Region, 2017, 11-12, illus. & descrip.) Working in collaboration with a local Ottawa architect J. Albert Ewart, Waid executed a dignified monumental work both fitting and appropriate in the context of the Parliament Buildings which stand opposite on the north side of Wellington Street.

Born in Gouverneur, New York on 31 March 1864 he studied architecture at Columbia University and from 1888 until 1894 served as head draftsman with the eminent Chicago firm of Jenney & Mundie. He began his own practice in New York in 1898 and during his career executed virtually all of the major commissions for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York, including the annex to their head office, their new head office building erected 1930-33 (with H.W. Corbett) and their printing plant in Long Island City. He also planned the Long Island Hospital at Brooklyn and several buildings on the campus of Monmouth College, Illinois. He was elected President of the American Institute of Architects in 1924, and died at Greenwich, Connecticut on 31 October 1939 (obituary in the New York Times, 1 Nov. 1939, 23; biography and port. in National Cyclopedia of American Biography, xxix, 347-48).