Hart's grandfather Samuel Wood, father Thomas Hart Benton Wood, and uncle Louis M. H. Wood were all in the building trades. His Uncle Louis had studied architecture at Cornell University, sought work in Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871, then settled in Kansas in 1873, working until 1887 with architect John G. Haskell, whose commissions included the Kansas State Capitol, Chase County Courthouse, and buildings for the University of Kansas, Washburn University, Haskell Institute, and federal schools for tribes in the neighboring Indian Territory. Thomas moved his family west in the early 1880s, settling for a time in Hays, Kansas. By 1890, both brothers had moved to a booming Denver, Colorado, awash with architects and civic art clubs and rapidly filling with Richardsonian Romanesque buildings downtown.