"Business-Like and Up-to-Date": What's in a Name?
By Kate Reggev
If you’re addicted to podcasts (raises hand), you may be familiar with NPR’s popular How I Built This podcast. And you might even remember the first episode, where Sarah Blakely, founder of women’s undergarment company Spanx, talks about her journey starting the business while working as a door-to-door fax saleswoman (hello late 1990s!) — including the challenges she had coming up with a name for her product. She explains how she finally decided on the name Spanx and the importance to her of have a “k” sound in the name because, she realized, some of the most successful companies like Coca-Cola and Kodak had a strong “k” sound (what a coincidence...both Madame Architect and In Ink have this sound too!). She was looking for something lighthearted and memorable, but also something that was not only unique in transcription (and thus easier to trademark) but orally sounded a specific way.
Marcia Mead of Schenck & Mead. Courtesy the Library of Congress, c. 1915.
All that to say: selecting a name can be a complex, multi-faceted endeavor where you might try to balance professionalism with playfulness, or something easy to remember with something that sounds formal and official. And for many early female architects who started practicing around the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th, coming up with a name for their firm was one of the most visible aspects of a firm. It was more than just a formality; the name was the public face of the office that would be written up in newspapers, published in magazines, stamped on drawings, and embossed satisfyingly on letterhead. It might also be the first time potential clients or fellow practitioners heard about the firm — but the question was, should the fact that the firm was run by a woman be obvious from the get-go, or should it be subtly hidden from immediate recognition?
Indeed, determining how these women wanted to be addressed in professional correspondence, at the drafting table, and on construction sites was fraught with complications and questions. Should they go by first and last name, or just their last name, perhaps as a means to camouflage their sex? For example, the partnership of Anna Schenck and Marcia Mead, early female graduates of Columbia’s School of Architecture, established their New York firm in 1914 called, aptly, Schenck & Mead, which apparently misled their contemporaries. The Washington Post soon commented on their name choice, writing, “‘Schenck & Mead, architects.’ It sounds business-like and up-to-date, doesn’t it? One thinks at once of either two young men starting out in their careers or of possibly two well-established, elderly, bewhiskered gentlemen. Wrong this time! Your Schenck & Mead, architects, are Miss Anna Pendleton Schenck and Miss Marcia Mead.” Although The Post blew their cover, the two managed to secure multiple projects, predominantly in single and multi-family housing and working-class tenement buildings.
Hotel Lafayette in Buffalo, NY by Bethune, Bethune and Fuchs, circa 1900. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Correspondence between Louise Blanchard Bethune and the AIA, 1904
Another option might be to use one’s married name, especially if a woman was practicing together with her husband (remember — a woman keeping her name after marriage was practically unheard of until the 1970s and 1980s!). For example, Bethune & Bethune, the firm of the first female member of the American Institute of Architects Louise Blanchard Bethune and her husband, sounded much more like a father-son partnership or two brothers working together than that of a husband-wife one — and I doubt that was by coincidence. The same went for Morrow & Morrow, the firm of the San Francisco-based husband-and-wife duo Irving Morrow and Gertrude Comfort Morrow, who, among other local projects, served as the architects of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The use of both of their last names was honest and yet ambiguous, truthful but perhaps just a touch... misleading. However, the inclusion of both names as equals expressed the collaboration and partnership between the two, significantly formalizing and highlighting their contributions and decisions that were made together.
On the other hand, several single practitioners opted for using just first initials and their last name, again to avoid outright and immediate prejudice from potential clients, government officials, contractors, competition judges, or magazine publishers. Charlotte Julian Mesic, a drafter in the office of Julia Morgan, often went by C. Julian Mesic, and Henrietta Cuttino Dozier, the third female architect admitted to the AIA, often went by H.C. Dozier or even “Harry” or “Cousin Harry” to try and disguise her sex. And while this often worked to their advantage and would allow for some correspondence to proceed as they desired, it in turn made it even more difficult for researchers and historians (like me!) who have been trying to uncover the stories and lives of these early female architects.
Ironically, at the same time, there were women who, thanks to their gender-neutral names, were assumed to be male and didn’t need to rely on using their initials or nicknames. Lois Lilley Howe, a well-connected architect who became a founding member of Howe, Manning and Almy, Boston’s first all-female architecture partnership, likely ended up becoming the second woman voted into the AIA because the electing members of the committee believed the name ‘Lois’ to be that of a male architect (although to be fair, she noted her middle name, Lilley, in her application, and the AIA members advocating for her abilities and work called her “Miss Lois Lilley Howe”). Similarly, Marion Isadore Manley (1893-1984), a Florida-based architect with a career spanning from the 1910s to the 1970s (!!), was initially accepted to the Florida AIA because they too had assumed that she was male, addressing her acceptance letter to “Mr. Marion Manley.”
Correspondence between the AIA and Henrietta Dozier, 1926. Note the initials in her letterhead and signature.
Another tactic that some single practitioners used was to openly announce and embrace their feminine names, perhaps with the intention of attracting clients of the same sex -- but while still emphasizing their authority and knowledge. Accomplished New York architect Katharine Cotheal Budd struggled with this, asking to be referred to as “Katharine Cotheal Budd, Architect,” -- a very professional, if also very honest-to-her-gender, request. However, she was frustrated by the way that the AIA insisted on referring to her as “Miss,” despite the lack of similar titles for all other members. “In vain have I indicated my great desire to be known as the above [Katharine Cotheal Budd, Architect]... Will the AIA do it? No,” she wrote in frustration in 1926.
Of course, it’s important to note that for many of the women who opted to use their full name at this time (like Katharine Cotheal Budd) also had the luxury of possessing first and last names that were predominantly of Anglo-Saxon origin, which might reveal their gender but also bolstered their social status. Women with more “ethnic” or non-white names were at an even further disadvantage, and were probably even more likely to seek variations of their name to obscure their race or ethnicity as well as their gender.
And finally, the name of a firm could also signify societal changes or even alterations to the composition of a married couple’s partnership. In the 1920s, the Chicago-based firm of Kimball & Nedved was founded by Elizabeth Kimball Nedved and her husband, Edward Nedved. The use of her maiden name in the firm’s title was unusual but perhaps a sign of more progressive times in the late 1920s, but the firm then merged with an existing Chicago office to become Hamilton, Fellows, & Nedved. The dropping of “Kimball” from the name of the firm was subtly indicative of their attitude toward the lone female partner. Technically, she joined the firm as an equal partner, with the intention that the Nedveds would together establish a new department at the firm that focused on continuing the couple’s existing portfolio of residential work. However, Elizabeth’s role in the office would be de-emphasized almost immediately, and verged on silent in publications.
Since the 1920s and 1930s, women have continued to enter into the field of architecture, especially after the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s. And with their increased numbers came a shift in the way many firms chose to be named, often opting for more anonymous initials like HOK or SOM or choosing entirely abstract monikers like Archigram or The Architects Collaborative (TAC), where it was virtually impossible to tell just by the name whether the firm was run by male or female architects -- and, importantly, where the name alone suggested a movement away from the idea of a single (male) architect as a heroic figure and more towards a collaborative environment and brand.
“This Woman Has Both a Career and a Husband- She and He Forge to the Front of Architects,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 6, 1928, p. 13.
And this trend has continued today: many firms see their name as part of a broader PR and branding opportunity, using words or phrases that evoke specific feelings or concepts rather than an homage to the person who set up the company in the first place. At the same time, some firms have decided to embrace what they might have previously tried to hide, from using their full name including female first names (think of Zaha Hadid, for example) to outright feminist or tongue-in-cheek choices like feminist architecture collaborative and Design, Bitches. So in the end, what do we make of all of this? Why should we care about names and titles in the first place? Personally, I have always been interested in words and names and their meanings and etymology, but I also believe that how we seek to be recognized in public says a lot about who we are, what we want to be, and how we want to be perceived and treated by others. I’m hopeful that we’re getting closer and closer to a day when naming a firm, whether it's after oneself or something else, implies nothing but intelligence and ability regardless of implied gender, race, or ethnicity.