New Website on Pioneering Women Architects Debuts (BWAF)

Marion Mahony Griffin
Ada Louise Huxtable
Ray Kaiser Eames

The new website “50 Pioneering Women of American Architecture” has been launched by the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, a group that seeks to elevate women in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professions.

The website https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org presents historically significant women practitioners as selected by a jury of prominent architectural historians and based on criteria of the highest standards, according to Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA, executive director of the foundation.

The inspiring and educational website, ideal for practitioners and students alike, has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the developer Forest City and dozens of architects and design firms. (See the full list below.) It started in 2012 with two women, Wanda Bubriski and Beverly Willis, who wanted to uncover the work that American women architects had done during the early decades of the twentieth century.

As stated by BWAF, “Within the context of broad social changes from 1848 to the adoption of the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment, women have risen from the status of chattel to almost full participation in contemporary politics and society. This online collection will benefit architectural scholars, historians, educators, students, practitioners, and the general public.”

The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s website “Pioneering Women of American Architecture” has been edited by by co-directors Mary McLeod and Victoria Rosner, and it serves as a special collection within the Dynamic National Archive of Women in Architecture. “The Collection of Women of 20th-Century American Architecture is a special, peer reviewed, juried collection to be housed in the Dynamic National Archive, preserving the legacies of approximately 50 historically significant women—architects, designers, critics, curators and policymakers, born before 1940—who contributed to creating the American built environment between 1880 and 1980,” say McLeod and Rosner.

The full website is here: https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org and donations to this long-term project can be made here: http://www.bwaf.org/portfolio/pioneering-women-of-american-architecture/

“When a young person, even a gifted one, grows up without proximate living examples of what she may aspire to become – whether lawyer, scientist, artist or leader in any realm – her goal remains abstract … But a role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, Yes, someone like me can do this.’” — Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

The site was designed by Los Angeles-based Yay Brigade. More details on this special project of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation follows below, along with a list of its supporters.

ABOUT THE COLLECTION
By Mary McLeod and Victoria Rosner, Co-Directors
Pioneering Women of American Architecture

Pioneering Women of American Architecture is a collection of profiles of fifty women who have made important contributions to American architecture. All of these women were born before 1940, at a time when women struggled both to be allowed entrance into the architectural profession and to be recognized for their work. As such, the names of many of these women are not well known, even among architectural historians.

However, as these profiles show, each of these women has made significant individual and collective contributions to the history of American architecture and the built environment. While their work is stylistically varied and ranges in its scope from urban plans and institutional buildings to domestic interiors and furniture, many of these women were important innovators, designing utopian communities, humane tenement houses, “rational” kitchens, built-in storage units and fold-out beds, and even early solar houses. They also broke many barriers, both sexual and racial, challenging the institutions of architecture itself as well as many of the social conventions and gender stereotypes of their time.

Documenting the lives and works of these women was an enormous task, requiring hundreds of interviews and countless hours digging through archives, as well as endless fact-checking and photographic documentation. The scholars who worked on these profiles represent one of the largest groups ever to focus exclusively on women’s contributions to the U.S. built environment and to place the work of women squarely at the center of architectural history. The fifty women profiled here are just a beginning of an effort that we hope will continue to expand as more women’s lives and careers are added to the historical record. Going forward, we hope this project can move architecture created by women to the center of architectural history and invite more young women to study and practice of architecture.

Pioneering Women of American Architecture began in 2012 with two women, Wanda Bubriski and Beverly Willis, who wanted to uncover the work that American women architects had done during the early decades of the twentieth century.

SUPPORTERS

Forest City
Leers Weinzapfel Associates
Jane Chmielinski
Jacquiline Zehner
Susan Rodriguez
Mary-Jean Eastman
Nancy Alexander
Ronette Riley
Erleen Hatfield
John Carey
Susan Mitchell-Ketzes
Marion White
Wanda Bubriski
Claire Weisz
Roger Williams University

PIONEER SPONSORS

Alice Constance Austin is sponsored by Jill Lerner, FAIA
Florence Knoll Bassett is sponsored by Renee Charles
Louise Blanchard Bethune is sponsored by Kelly Hayes McAlonie, AIA
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter is sponsored by Women of FXFOWLE
Natalie Griffin de Blois is sponsored by Marilyn Jordan Taylor, FAIA
Ray Kaiser Eames is sponsored by Marion Weiss, FAIA
Ethel Bailey Furman is sponsored by S. Lindsay Klein, AIA, Lindsay Architecture Studio, P.C
Marion Mahony Griffin is sponsored by Jennifer Sage, FAIA and Sara Caples, AIA
Ada Louise Huxtable is sponsored by Women of FXFOWLE
Sibyl Moholy-Nagy is sponsored by Architecture Research Office
Theodate Pope is sponsored by Christina Davis
Norma Merrick Sklarek is sponsored by Women of FXFOWLE
Cloethiel Woodard Smith is sponsored by LandDesign, Inc.
Beverly Ann Willis is sponsored by Kristi Ambrosetti

With support from the National Endowment for the Arts