CHARLES E. HUGHES 3D DEAD; LEADER IN BANK ARCHITECTURE (Published 1985)

Charles Evans Hughes 3d, the architect who played the major role in the design of the Manufacturers Hanover Bank on Fifth Avenue and 43d Street, a four-story glass box built in 1954 that was widely believed to set the architecture of banks in a new direction, died Monday in New York. He was 69 years old.

Mr. Hughes, who lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, was the grandson of Charles Evans Hughes, the former Chief Justice of the United States. At the time he designed the Manufacturers Hanover Bank he was on the staff of the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which held an in-house competition among many of its architects to find a design for the bank.

''Charles Evans Hughes 3d won hands-down,'' Nathaniel Owings, a founder of the firm, later wrote in his autobiography. ''His four-story, glass- walled bank featured as the central drama of the scheme the great bank vault, the sculptural feature of the composition.''

The bank design, completed at a time when most banks were solid, stone buildings, was internationally celebrated as one of the major postwar buildings of New York. It led to the commission to design the Citibank at Kennedy International Airport, a modern building standing up on metal columns that was probably Mr. Hughes's second-best-known bank structure.

Historic Preservation Work

Mr. Hughes was born on March 14, 1915, in New York City. He attended Brown University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. For many years he conducted his own practice, Hughes Cecil Goodman Architects, and developed a specialty in historic preservation work. In the 1970's he served as the architect for several restoration projects in the South Street Seaport complex, and was also the consulting architect for the Morris-Jumel Mansion and the Friends Meeting House in Manhattan.

Mr. Hughes, who was particularly active in civic issues relating to zoning and historic preservation, served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1978 and 1979, and was president of the Municipal Art Society from 1968 to 1970. In 1982, he was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

He is survived by his wife, Kimberly; two sisters, Mrs. George L. Campbell of Stonington, Conn., and Mrs. William L. Johnson of Irvington, N.Y., and a brother, H. Stuart Hughes of La Jolla, Calif. There will be a funeral service Monday at 5 P.M. at the First Reformed Episcopal Church, 319 East 50th Street.