City by Women: A Walking Tour

Natalie Griffin de Blois, Courtesy of Skidmore Owings Merrill.

By Kate Reggev

October is one of my favorite months in New York: when I’m finally able to make it out onto the street without breaking a sweat (thank you, New York humidity) and when it’s not quite cold enough for me and my perpetually cold hands can get away with an extra layer of Uniqlos’ HeatTech shirts (I’m convinced they do actually work). It’s hands-down the perfect weather for exploring new neighborhoods and long city strolls, one of my favorite activities.

And as I walk, I often think about who designed the buildings and spaces that surround me: the hands that put in to mylar to visually demonstrated how they would be constructed, the minds that determined the forms and motifs that we would see today, the hands that laid the brick walls or poured the concrete of the sidewalks beneath my feet. A few years ago, it occurred to me something that the vast majority of these spaces and places had in common: they were predominantly the work of men, and typically older white men, at that.

This point came to an even sharper focus when I read writer Rebecca Solnit’s truly phenomenal essay “City of Women” in the New Yorker and later the book it was excerpted from, Nonstop Metropolis by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. In it, Solnit describes New York City as a “manscape,” where everything from individual streets to entire neighborhoods are named almost exclusively after men; the few female statues of women throughout the city are “allegories and nobodies, mothers and muses and props but not Presidents” (although I should point out that this has recently changed, with the completion of the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument of Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in Central Park). I wanted to point out to Solnit that it goes even beyond that, to the minds and hands that designed and built the spaces around us.

But at the same time, I also wanted to remember the precious few structures and spaces that were designed by female architects starting in the late nineteenth century, when women slowly began to trickle into the profession through various means ranging from public universities to private tutors, hands-on apprenticeships to distance learning. I started to chart out some of the places that these women designed between the 1890s and 1970s, and ended up linking them along a walking tour that starts at the Upper East Side and ends in Midtown Manhattan — not necessarily the most diverse part of the city nor the only areas that early female architects contributed to, but certainly a start to an alternate way of seeing the world. But with the spirit of Archtober and the inspiring virtual walks that the NewYork Times’ Michael Kimmelman has done on a weekly basis since the start of the pandemic in mind, let’s begin!

65 East 80th Street

We’ll start our tour on what the late architectural historian and New York Times columnist Christopher Gray once called “one of the most charming on the Upper East Side,” thanks to its “mix of row houses and individually built town houses.” Among the mix is an elegant rowhouse renovation by early female architect Katharine Cotheal Budd (1860–1951), who completed the project in 1915 for perfume merchant Francis R. Arnold (and no, it is not shaped like a perfume bottle).

Katherine C. Budd in her NYC Madison Avenue office ca. 1918. From The Exceptional One Women In American Architecture 1888-1988. Image courtesy of Victoria Budd Opperman Collection, AIA Archives.

Like its neighbors Nos. 61 through 69 on the block, No. 65 was originally constructed in the 1880s as part of the speculative development of a group of brownstones — typical housing for the city’s affluent for that era and neighborhood. And when revamping the facades of old school brownstones became de rigueur after the turn of the twentieth century, its original facade gave way to Budd’s design.

Tax photo of 65 East 80th Street. Courtesy of Municipal Archives.

She created a stylish but restrained facade out of brick and limestone, removing the projecting stoop and ornate cornice. The updated Colonial Revival exterior featured a ground-level entry through a shallow columned portico; on the second and third floors, a wide band of triple windows brought in more light than the former narrow windows. Two individual windows on the fourth floor were likely for bedrooms, and the fifth floor now had dormered windows projecting out of a mansard roof. Today, the building looks remarkably similar, even though it’s been converted into apartments.

The building’s redesign was completed by Katharine Cotheal Budd, a native of Iowa whose career in architecture was a long one. By the time she applied for membership to the New York AIA in 1916 (as the first female architect), she stated that she had already been in practice since the 1890s. Her early training was informal through the administration of renovation projects and private tutoring, but she was able to study formally at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris and subsequently work in the offices of well-known New York architects like William Potter and Grosvenor Atterbury. Within the first decade of the twentieth century, she had completed dozens of projects including the renovation of this townhouse, as well as another one further south that we’ll take a look at. From her office at 10 Gramercy Park, she applied to be among the earliest female architects to be a member of the New York State AIA.

From 65 East 80th Street, head west towards Park Avenue. Let’s walk south down Park Avenue and enjoy the wide street and its green spaces until we get to about 72nd Street.

Park Avenue Mall and 72nd Street (Images:

You’ll notice as you putter down Park Avenue that it’s unlike most other streets and avenues in New York, thanks to its width and the integration of greenery between the north and southbound traffic lanes. I’d even say that the Park Avenue Malls, as they’re called, are one of the greatest unsung landscaping heroes of Manhattan, and were redesigned in 1970 by landscape architect Clara Stimson Coffee (1894-1982).

One of the most important historical facts (nerd alert!) about the Upper East Side — and Park Avenue more specifically — is how dramatically the urban landscape changed when the noisy, smoky Metro-North trains running from Grand Central north were relocated underground in the 1870s. While pushing the trains below ground kept them out of sight and reduced their unsightly presence, there was still a need for ventilation to let the smoke and exhaust escape along its now-covered path. As a result, voids were made between the lanes of traffic and were cleverly camouflaged with landscaping and fenced off to the public.

Clara Coffeys model design for the Park Avenue Mal, September 20, 1969. Courtesy NYC Parks Department

This disguise evolved throughout the 1930s and 1940s with the additions of trees, tulips, and other plantings, but these mini-parks remained inaccessible to the public, until Coffey came onto the scene. Educated at the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Landscape Architecture in 1917 and then a Masters of Landscape Design in 1919, Coffey worked in several prominent landscape architect’s offices (including several female landscape architects in the 1920s) before working on her own. She spent several years working for the NYC Department of Parks in the 1930s, but then went back to private practice starting in the 1940s.

Clara Stimson Coffey, Courtesy of The Cultural Landscapes Foundation.

In 1970, the Parks Department had Coffey redesign the Park Avenue parks, removing the fencing, preserving important vistas, and providing recommendations on types of plants that would best withstand the environment and provide sufficient coverage of the ventilation openings. Kwanzan cherry trees and seasonal flowers in wood border fences were added, and summer plantings of begonias and fall plantings of tulip bulbs were carefully planned. Working with mall gardener Peter Van Dee Wetering, her suggestions went beyond the aesthetic and also considered practical elements, like proper soil drainage and accessibility. While it wasn’t until the late 1970s and early 1980s that all blocks from East 50th Street through 96th Street that the design recommendations were implemented, they dramatically transformed public space along Park Avenue. In the words of the Parks Department, the design “exemplifies her design philosophy — understated, practical and accessible.”

Bonus stop for the end of the tour: Clara Coffey memorial marker is located at Sutton Place South between 53rd and 54th Streets, within a former sandbox converted by the Sutton Area Community Block Association to a lush garden with a decorative urn.

From the Park Avenue Mall at East 72nd Street, continue down Park Avenue to East 63rd Street. Turn east on 63rd until you’re about midway down the block towards Madison Avenue. Stop once you’ve reached:

29 East 63rd Street

We’ve quickly arrived at yet another one of Katharine Cotheal Budd’s townhouse renovation projects, this one completed several years earlier in 1908. Built as one of nine brownstones in this development that ran along Madison Avenue and west along East 63rd Street, take a look at No. 33 to get an idea of what the building originally looked like, with Neo-Grec detailing including a rusticated facade, stone sills and lintels, and bracketed cornice.

Budd’s renovation sought to reflect the changing nature of the neighborhood at the time: while the brownstones were initially built for a middle- to upper-middle class client, the neighborhood was becoming decidedly more upscale by 1908, and brownstones were seen as old fashioned and deteriorating (their easily-weathered brownstone facade did not help them in this case!). As wealthier families moved into these homes, they wanted to personalize them, and often hired well-known architects (think McKim, Mead, and White and the like) to create more individual and distinct facades that reflected an updated aesthetic sensibility — and that could take full advantage of the lot by removing the front stoops.

Even though Budd wasn’t a noted architect at the time, she was hired by linguist Henry Jagoe Burchell, Jr. to transform the home. She dramatically altered the building’s appearance: everything, from the way one enters it to its fenestration patterns, its material selection to its architectural style, changed. Replacing the dark brownstone is a lighter glazed brick, and the home extends out to the lot line. The ground floor entry is actually reached by stepping down a few steps instead of up the old stoop, and the two large first floor windows open out onto semi-circular juliette balconies crowned with dramatic brick arches with limestone keystones. Sets of smaller windows on the second, third, and fourth floors above, a simple cornice, and the use of a light glazed brick gave the building a style that mixed Colonial Revival and Neo-Classical.

Thanks (some might say, at least) to the designation of the Upper East Side Historic District in 1981, the building’s exterior has remained largely unchanged since its renovation in 1908, although its interiors were converted into apartments in 1955.

Bonus point: When she applied to be a member of the New York chapter of the AIA, Budd demanded that the AIA refrain from adding “Miss” to her name in its listings, because similar designations were not made to any male member’s name.

Let’s head back west towards Park Avenue, and head south two blocks to East 61st Street. Continue east until you reach 224 East 61st Street between Second and Third Avenues — this will be a short stop.

224 East 61st Street

We’ll only be making a quick stop here, as there’s no longer all that much to see (for our purposes, anyway!). In an interesting turn of events, the 1919 redesign of this rowhouse’s facade by architect Josephine Wright Chapman (1867–1943) was reversed and brought the home closer back to its original Italianate brownstone appearance.

Josephine Wright Chapman, 1914. From A Woman Who Builds Homes in Ladies Home Journal.

Chapman, who practiced in both New York and Boston despite not receiving any formal education or encouragement from her family to pursue architecture, completed several dozen (!) major commissions during her career. During the 1910s, she redesigned several brownstone facades in the area, and her work here for Titanic survivors Richard and Sallie Beckwith removed the stoop, installed a new medieval-inspired entry door, stripped the window trim, replaced the windows, and stuccoed the facade in a light-colored finish for what was considered at the time to be an “artistic” design (Vogue even called it “the atmosphere of Italy”!). Apparently, though, later homeowners disagreed, and brought back the original detailing around the windows and other features — although they kept the ground floor entry.

Okay, we’re almost wrapping up here. Let’s head back towards Park Avenue and mentally prepare ourselves for a totally different scale, building type, and era. Once you get to Park, head south until you reach 59th Street. Hang out on the Park Avenue Mall and look southwest towards 500 Park Avenue, also known as the Pepsi-Cola Building.

500 Park Avenue/ Pepsi-Cola Building

We’ve reached the last stop on our little tour, and we’re ending with the work of one of Modernism’s tropes: the glass office tower. But 500 Park Avenue isn’t just any midcentury office block: perched on top of a recessed ground floor, this 1960 pristine, glazed office building is the work of prolific design architect Natalie Griffin de Blois (1921-2013; completed with design partner Gordon Bunshaft) of the renowned architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Originally the corporate offices of the Pepsi-Cola Company, the sleek, modern design sought to embody the forward-thinking vision of the company, particularly in contrast to its older, masonry-clad neighbors.

As you might imagine based on our previous stops that focused primarily on private homes, Park Avenue north of 50th Street had largely been residential prior to World War II. But the area underwent a major transformation of character in the 1950s after a successful rezoning campaign for a commercial avenue, and major architectural icons for some of the nation’s largest corporations began to pop up, like Lever House (390 Park Avenue, 1950-52, SOM) and the Seagram Building (375 Park Avenue, 1957, Mies van der Rohe).

500 Park Avenue aka The Pepsi-Cola Building. Copyright Ezra Stoller Esto.

During the same period, Pepsi-Cola Company, originally founded at the turn of the twentieth century as a bargain-price competitor to Coca-Cola, revamped its corporate structure and implemented a new, glamorous marketing campaign. To go along with this new image, the company hired SOM, a firm then at the cutting-edge of corporate office design; Columbia grad Natalie de Blois, one of the few women architects at the firm at the time, led the design as senior designer. She, along with her colleagues, developed an award-winning design often compared to gems or jewels for its meticulously-detailed, satin-smooth, glassy exterior.

At eleven stories, its two principal facades are broken down into a curtain wall grid of oversized panels of polished plate glass with anodized aluminum horizontal spandrel panels and polished aluminum vertical mullions. When it was completed, it touted Pepsi’s modernity from each facade, distinct in architectural style and material.

Sadly, though, its magnificent design (not to mention insatiable photogenic qualities) did not keep Pepsi from leaving the building for the suburbs in 1968, and the building has since been occupied by a long list of corporations. Because it’s a listed New York City landmark, though, it’s presence is all but guaranteed — unlike its cousin down the block at 270 Park Avenue, another one of de Blois’ excellent office towers, which was recently demolished by its owner, JP Morgan Chase (don’t get me started on that!). For the time being, though, let’s just appreciate this beauty and what it brings to the New York streetscape, female designer and all.

Hungry for more? This part of Midtown has a bunch of goodies designed by women: you could pay your respects at 270 Park and mourn its loss; Lever House was another project that de Blois worked on early in her career. There are some fantastic murals at Temple Emanu-El and Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall by noted artist Hildreth Meiere, and several other intriguing projects by early female architects and designers — to the point where we might need to do a second walking tour!

Extra Reading… For those whose interest has been piqued:

Nonstop Metropolis, by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Shapiro

The Rowhouse Reborn, by Andrew Scott Dolkart

The First American Women Architects, by Sarah Allaback