Following graduation from the University of California in 1895, Corbett pursued training in architecture in the Atelier Pascal at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, from 1896 to 1900. Before returning to New York in 1901, when he entered the offices of Cass Gilbert, Corbett had already designed and built an office building in Geneva, Switzerland. Corbett formed his first independent practice in partnership with F. Livingston Pell, and with Pell received his first Architectural League medal for a building constructed in 1908. From 1912 to 1922 he was in partnership with Frank J. Helmle. Corbett was an early advocate of the skyscraper, and in 1920 built the Bush Terminal Building on Forty-second Street, one of New York's first modern buildings of this type.
Despite his Beaux-Arts training, he was an aggressive supporter of Modernism in urban design, and in association with various other architects, Corbett was responsible for many of the buildings which marked New York's emergence as a landmark of the twentieth century. In 1922 he joined the firm of Harrison and MacMurray. Among their projects were Number One Fifth Avenue, 1927, and the Metropolitan Life Building, 1933. However, the firm's outstanding accomplishment was the design of Rockefeller Center, for which it received the Architectural League Medal of Honor in 1937. The firm name changed to Corbett and MacMurray in 1935, and in that year designed a group of buildings for Brooklyn College. In 1941, as Harvey Wiley Corbett Associates, the firm built dormitories for the University of California.
Throughout his career Corbett was active in national arts organizations. He served as president of the Architectural League and the National Arts Society and was director of the Metropolitan Opera Association. He was also chairman of architectural advisory committees for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, and the 1939 New York World's Fair. The New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects presented Corbett its annual Medal of Honor in 1954.
