[1] Hardwick worked in the City of London, where he became the leading architect of grandiose banking offices, mainly in an Italianate manner.
[1] His best known work was the Great Hall of London's Euston railway station (opened on 27 May 1849).
The Great Hall was demolished in 1962 to make way for construction of the current Euston Station building.
Two of his sons went into the military and served in South Africa during the Boer War; one of them, Lieutenant Stephen Thomas Hardwick, was killed in gunfire during the battle of Tweefontein in 1901.
Hardwick's daughter, Helen, married Sir Henry George Lyons (1864–1944), later a director of the Science Museum in London.