Sophia Hayden (October 17, 1868 – February 3, 1953) was an American architect and first female graduate of the four-year program[1] in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[7] When she was six, she was sent to Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, to live with her paternal grandparents, George and Sophia Hayden, and attended the Hillside School.

Hayden shared a drafting room with Lois Lilley Howe,[8] a fellow female architect at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Hayden based her design on her thesis project, "Renaissance Museum of Fine Arts," a grand two-story structure with center and end pavilions, multiple arches, columned terraces and other classical features, reflecting her Beaux-Art training.

[13] Her frustration eventually was pointed to as typifying women's unfitness for supervising construction, although many architects sympathized with her position and defended her.

In the end the rifts were made up, perhaps, and Hayden's building received an award for "Delicacy of style, artistic taste, and geniality and elegance of the interior."