Henry Vaughan [also known as Henry Vaughn] was born in Bebbington, Rockferry, Cheshire, England on 17 January 1845. He was articled to George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907) from 1867 and remained with him for some years, becoming head draughtsman in the architectural practice Bodley & Garner formed by Bodley and Thomas Garner (1839-1906). In 1881 Vaughan emigrated to the USA and settled in Boston, Massachusetts where he opened an office in Pemberton Square.
Vaughan was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and a founder member of the Boston Society of Architects. He was awarded a Sliver Medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 and honorary from Bawdoin College in 1904 and Yale University in 1907. He died in Boston on 30 June 1917.
Vaughan acquired a reputation as one of the foremost church designers in the USA. Many of his churches were in the English Gothic style. In the early 1900s he assisted Bodley in his competition-winning entry for the proposed Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul [now Washington National Cathedral] in Washington, DC. Following Bodley's death, Vaughan took full charge of the project, a task on which he was still working at the time of his own death, a decade late. Notable among Vaughan's own commissions were St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts (1888); The Episcopal Church of the Mediator in Kingsbridge, New York (1913); Christ Church in New Haven, Connecticut (1895-98); Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York (with Ralph Adams Cram, 1902-04); Amasa Stone Chapel at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio (1911); and the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts (1913-15, 1920)
Directory of British Architects 1834-1914. Compiled by Antonia Brodie, et al. Volume 2: L-Z. London; New York: British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects/Continuum, 2001
Morgan, William. ‘The Architecture of Henry Vaughan and the Episcopal Church’. Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church vol. 42, No. 2, June 1973 pp.125-135
Withey, Henry F. and Withey, Elsie Rathburn. Biographical dictionary of American architects (deceased). Los Angeles, California: New Age Publishing Co., 1956