In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily. Architectural historians Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy tell the stories of the resilient, resourceful women who surmounted barriers of sexism, racism, and classism to take on crucial roles in the establishment and growth of Modernism across the United States.
Hunting and Murphy describe how the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in Massachusetts evolved for the professional education of women between 1916 and 1942. While alumnae such as Eleanor Agnes Raymond, Victorine du Pont Homsey, and Sarah Pillsbury Harkness achieved renown, others like Elizabeth-Ann Campbell Knapp and Louisa Vaughan Conrad have been largely absent from histories of Modernism.
Hunting and Murphy explore how these innovative practitioners capitalized on social, educational, and professional ties to achieve success and used architecture to address social concerns, including how Modernist ideas could engage with community and the environment. Some joined women-led architectural firms, while others partnered with men or contributed to Modernism as retailers of household furnishings, writers and educators, photographers and designers, and fine artists.
Copies of their new book, Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism (Princeton), are available for purchase.
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