Wesley Haynes was born in Leominster in 1892. He attended the schools in that town, later moving to Boston to continue his education there. He worked as a draftsman for Peabody & Stearns, Allen & Collens, and others. In 1918 he returned to Leominster to open his own office, moving it to Fitchburg in 1920. In 1921 he and Harold E. Mason, an architect formerly of Keene, New Hampshire, formed a partnership, Haynes & Mason. By 1932 Mason was working semi-independently from an office in Leominster, and in 1933 they split completely. Haynes then established the firm of S. W. Haynes & Associates, which remained active until 1962. Upon the new year, the firm was reestablished as Haynes, Lieneck & Smith. Haynes died in 1983, but the office, relocated to Ashby in the 1980s, remains active.
He designed buildings in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut, several of which have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Architecture
For the first decade and a half of his career, Haynes primarily designed his buildings in the Colonial Revival style. He designed a number of major buildings in this style, including the Community Memorial Hospital and the Randall Hotel. After 1935, he switched to the Art Deco style, though only briefly. In this style, he designed the Anthony Building on the Fitchburg State campus, the high school at Uxbridge, and the Latchis Hotel in Brattleboro, Vermont. After the beginning of the war he gradually transitioned to the International Style, thus embracing modernism. His Burbank Hospital School of Nursing dates from this period, as is the Peter Noyes School in Sudbury.
For the rest of his career, his and his firm's works were in the Modernist manner. Large educational complexes of this era include the high schools at Saugus, East Longmeadow, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional, and North Andover. Some of Haynes' schools departed from their stripped-down aesthetic to include some more expressive detail, as at Mendon's former Nipmuc Regional High School, and at the fire station in Shirley. These details were probably due to the influence of Paul Lieneck.
In 1966 the office had the chance to design one last major Colonial Revival-influenced work. Calvin Coolidge College, a small Boston school associated with the New England School of Law, had decided on a move out of the city to rural Ashburnham. However, the plans fell through, and the school ceased operations in 1968. The proposed site is today a residential subdivision.
S. W. Haynes, 1918-1921
1919 - Pierce School (Remodeling), 593 Main St, Leominster, Massachusetts
Haynes & Mason, 1921-1933
1923 - Randall Hotel, 2760 White Mountain Hwy, North Conway, New Hampshire
