Phyllis Birkby (1932–1994) was an architect, co-founder of the Women’s School of Planning and Architecture, and a key member of the 1970s and ’80s lesbian feminist movement. In 1973, she initiated a groundbreaking research project, asking women and members of her lesbian community to break with patriarchal norms of design and draw their “fantasy environments”—the imaginative homes, shared spaces, and cities they’d like to inhabit. In her professional practice, she was not only a...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
Greene and her mother lived as lodgers on Chicago’s South Side, and Greene entered the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1932 to study architecture. She was the only black and only woman member of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ student chapter and she also became a member of Cenacle, the university’s drama club.11Greene’s name and image are included in a group photo of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Greene is also mentioned in an ...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
Sarah (“Sally”) Pillsbury was born on July 8, 1914 in Swampscott, Massachusetts, the daughter of Helen Farrington Watters and Samuel Hale Pillsbury, a lawyer. She attended the Winsor School in Boston, a girls’ preparatory school where her friends included Mary (“Molly”) Duncan Weed, who later married and practiced with the designer Eliot Noyes.11Interview with Sarah Harkness conducted by Perry Neubauer, November 3, 2006. I am grateful to Neubauer for providing the transcript of this...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
During the late nineteenth century, Lynchburg was a small but strategically located city in the South, the site of significant Civil War fighting that left severe physical devastation in its wake. During the postwar Reconstruction period (1865–77), the city experienced a building boom, and artisan builders experimented with emerging decorative styles, including Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, and Italianate. Meredith attended Jackson Street School in Lynchburg, established by the Freedmen’...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
In 1937, the Pittsburgh Courier recognized Ethel Bailey Furman (1893–1976) as the first female African American architect to practice in the state of Virginia.11“Architect,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 23, 1937. During the course of her career, which spanned over four decades, Furman designed more than two hundred buildings, including single-family residences, church projects in Central Virginia, and two chapels in Liberia.| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
In the summer of 1935, Coit returned to Europe, traveling to France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, and Germany, and visiting numerous low-income housing projects. She wrote an article for the Radcliffe Quarterly about European efforts to provide low-cost housing for their citizens, remarking that “to European cities the obligation of decent housing is almost as pressing as the obligation of properly maintained streets, unpolluted water supplies or fire protection. For this reason, the American...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
As a young woman, she attended Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa, first as a preparatory student in 1898–99, and then as a collegiate student from 1899 to 1902.22Archival records at Buena Vista University indicate that Nelle Peters (then Nelllie A. Nichols) only attended three years of the college program and did not graduate with a degree. Kristie Spotts (Director of Alumni Engagement, Buena Vista College), email to Mary McLeod, February 18, 2021. She had no interest in taking a busi...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture
Verna Cook was born on October 19, 1890 in Spokane, Washington, the daughter of a newspaper editor and a concert singer. After she graduated from Spokane High School in 1908, her family sent Verna and her sister to Boston, where they studied for a year at the Commonwealth Avenue School for young ladies.11The Commonwealth Avenue School, Boston, Massachusetts, College Preparatory Course of Study Diploma, 1908, in Verna Cook Shipway Papers, MSS 0105 (cited in notes below as Shipway Papers), box ...| Pioneering Women of American Architecture