Colonel Henry Matson Waite (May 15, 1869 - September 2, 1944) was an engineer and the City Manager of Dayton, Ohio starting in 1913.[1] He was the deputy administrator for the Public Works Administration from 1933 until September 1, 1935.[2][3]
Biography
editHe was born in Toledo, Ohio on May 15, 1869 to Henry Seldon Waite. Waite was the grandson of Morrison Waite, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court[4] and the great-grandson of his namesake, Connecticut judge and politician Henry Matson Waite. He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 then worked in railroad engineering and in coal mining.[5][6] He then served as the city engineer for Cincinnati, Ohio from 1911 to 1913. He was then elected as the first city manager of Dayton, Ohio in 1913 where he served a four-year term.[7]
He died on September 2, 1944.[2]
References
edit- ^ Isaac Frederick Marcosson (1914). "The Dayton Plan". Collier's magazine. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
After many such meetings and a month's careful combing of the field, the commission selected Henry M. Waite, of Cincinnati, to take up the duties which will doubtless set a new mark in the conduct of the American city. Mr. Waite is a trained engineer who has constructed and operated railroads, developed coal fields, and had big part in the actual operation of a metropolitan community. His most recent activity fits him peculiarly for the Dayton work, for he has been one of Mayor Hunt's chief aids in the physical rehabilitation of Cincinnati under the reform era which ended all too soon. He has built streets and sewers, handled large groups of men, and built up an organization that is a model. He knows buildings and he knows business. Big of bone, deep of chest, and keen of eye, he looks as if the terrific task of blazing a whole fresh city path would be bread and meat to him. ...
- ^ a b "Col. Henry Waite, Engineer, Dies. Deputy Administrator of PWA, Consultant on War Projects, Headed Huge Constructions". New York Times. September 2, 1944. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
Henry Matson Waite, Deputy Administrator of the Public Works ... city engineer of Cincinnati for two years, and city manager of Dayton, Ohio, for four . ...
- ^ Engineering News Record. 1935.
Henry M. Waite has resigned as Deputy Administrator of Public Works effective Sept. 1.
- ^ Andrew F. Warner (1892). One of the Warner family in America. p. 30.
Henry Seldon Waite. Children ... (2) Henry Matson b. May 15th 1869.
- ^ Technology review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1922.
they sent for the foremost expert in this line; namely, Henry M. Waite of the Class of 1890.
- ^ Engineering News Record. 1942.
Henry Matson Waite has had a many-sided engineering career. For his years after graduation from MIT, he was in railroad work and in coal mining, and in 1912 he went to Cincinnati as city engineer. Two years later Dayton appointed him ...
- ^ "City Manager Takes Charge of Dayton. First Large American Municipality to Test Centralized, Individual Government". New York Times. January 2, 1914. Retrieved 2010-07-13.
Dayton at midnight entered the growing ranks of the commission-governed cities and became the first large American city to intrust its business affairs to a City Manager. Henry M. Waite, formerly of Cincinnati, where he served as Service Director, and before that was an active figure in railroad and coalfield development circles, became the first City Manager.