Women Architects at Work: Making American Modernism

Histories of modern architecture often focus on the work of prolific individuals with lifelong careers, which contributes to the underrepresentation of women architects, as their work rarely fits this mold. By closely studying graduates of the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (1915–42), a graduate program for women in Massachusetts, and other women in architecture from the same period, authors and scholars Hunting (Edward Durell Stone: Modernism’s Populist Architect) and Murphy (history of art and architecture, Vanderbilt Univ.) identified an array of roles women played in the history of modernism in the United States. In addition to practicing architects, there were women who became authors, editors, educators, housing or community designers, craftspeople, entrepreneurs, and curators, and they helped spread modern architecture from these vantage points. Source material for the book includes women’s personal archives and scrapbooks still held by their descendants. A network analysis of the ties among the women fills some of the gap left by a lack of written descriptions of these important professional and personal connections.