In the decades preceding World War II, professional architecture schools enrolled increasing numbers of women, but career success did not come easily. Women Architects at Work tells the stories of the resilient and 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.
Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. 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 some notoriety, others like Elizabeth-Ann Campbell Knapp and Louisa Vaughan Conrad have been largely absent from histories of Modernism. Hunting and Murphy describe 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, or fine artists.
With stunning illustrations, Women Architects at Work offers new histories of recognized figures while recovering the stories of previously unsung women, all of whom contributed to the modernization of American architecture and design.
Mary Anne Hunting is an architectural historian and the author of Edward Durell Stone: Modernism’s Populist Architect. Kevin D. Murphy is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and professor and chair in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Vanderbilt University. His books include Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, Maine: Commerce, Culture, and Community on the Eastern Frontier.
"[Mary Anne Hunting and Kevin D. Murphy] succeeded in reviving the work of scores of impressive women. A well-populated, deeply researched history."鈥�Kirkus Reviews
"This book models the research and scholarship needed to more fully represent women in the history of architecture. The result is a richer story of both women in architecture and modernism in the United States."鈥�Library Journal starred review
"A valuable survey of modernist women architects. . . . Interspersed with ample photos and sketches, this is a comprehensive and welcome revival of a lesser-known chapter in the history of architecture."鈥�Publishers Weekly
"Architecture in the 20th century was a male-dominated profession (and not much has changed), but this study of the alumnae of the Cambridge School of Architecture in Massachusetts makes the case for women as necessarily shrewd operators."鈥�Apollo Magazine
"A pointillist account, touching on dozens of designers, and substituting an atomized collage for a few singular narrative trajectories. . . . The Modern project for the women of Women Architects at Work was creating places where the choice between domesticity and design could be a capricious and joyous one."鈥擹ach Mortice, Metropolis
"[Women Architects at Work] offer[s] new perspectives on recognized designers while also shining a light on lesser-known practitioners, whose contributions to the field are equally deserving of recognition."鈥擲ydney Shilling, Azure Magazine
"An exhaustive work of setting the record straight. . . . Hunting and Murphy’s project details the erasure of women in modernism as much as their contributions—it’s a necessary if painful symbiosis."鈥擫aura Raskin, Architect's Newspaper
"A great new book. . . . [that] really dives deep into a fascinating aspect of architectural history and American history that deserves a lot of attention."鈥擭icholas Redding, PreserveCast podcast
“Impeccably researched and written alongside gorgeous illustrations, this book opens our eyes to the importance of the women of the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Hunting and Murphy change how we think about the development of modernist architecture in the United States, revealing a nuanced, complex, and fascinating history.”—Despina Stratigakos, author of Where Are the Women Architects?
“Women Architects at Work offers a completely new take on American Modernism as a movement to which women contributed not just their tangible projects, but also a different approach to professional practice and collaboration.”—Alice T. Friedman, author of American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture
“A detailed and original exploration of women who studied architecture in the United States and then entered professional practice largely, but not exclusively, as architects. This ambitious book features a broad representation of both foreign- and American-born women who advanced the modern movement and its understanding of vernacular concerns.”—Mardges Bacon, author of Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid
This publication generally has been produced to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA but has not been checked for language shifts. It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to people with print disabilities. This book contains various accessibility features including alternative text for images, a table of contents, a page list, landmarks, a logical reading order, structural navigation, an index, and semantic structure. Where applicable, there are backlinks to the table of contents.
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