Hanging Her Shingle: Early Female Architects On Starting Their Own Firms
Ethel Bailey Furman, Virginia's Only Woman Architect. From The Afro-American, July 6, 1946.
By Kate Reggev
“Girl Architects Organize A Firm: First of Its Kind, It’s Expected to Show That Women Need Only Opportunity To Be Real Home Builders,” read a 1914 New York Times headline announcing the formation of Shenck and Mead, one of (although, in fact, not the) first architecture firms in the United States founded by two women. Indeed, as countless women have recounted here on Madame Architect, starting a firm, whether it was last year or back in 1914, is a major endeavor, an event certainly worthy of bold (if audacious) headlines in major newspapers — although realistically, many do it today with a somewhat unceremonious launch of a website with a few photos, if that!
Over the decades, starting one’s own business has come to be seen as the pinnacle of architectural achievement where full creative expression is permitted, rubbing elbows with glamorous clients is a given, and the founder or owner can determine their own fate, design decisions, project involvement, and task allocation — or so the rest of us imagine! Historically, it also meant putting your own name on the door when you hung your shingle (remember when we discussed firm names a few months ago?). It was a way of ensuring that you would, with certainty, be the boss running the show.
That’s not to say, however, that reality matched appearances, either one hundred years ago or even today. So I’ve gathered some snippets of what embarking on the adventure of having one’s own firm was like for a handful of early female architects, told both in their own words and, at times, interpreted by an insightful if overzealous reporter.
Anna Pendleton Schenck (1874-1915) and Marcia Mead (1879-1967), Founders of Schenck & Mead, Established 1914
“We have been in business only a week, and we already have two orders. Other women architects, practicing independently, have done fairly well; we are going to do very well. Of course, we love the work, but we have another viewpoint, and are really tremendously interested in the feminist side of it. There has never been a firm of women architects before, but our example is going to help somebody else, perhaps, to start out and do what has never before been done.”
The Connecticut Development in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by Schenck and Mead. From The American Architect, February 6 1918.
Schenck and Mead’s Bird's Eye Perspective of a Neighborhood Center. From The Real Estate Magazine, March 1915.
“Our co-partnership is lots of fun, but we’re terribly businesslike. Some architects close their offices in the middle of the day, but we’re here every day from 9 to 5. And we don’t call it a studio, either. Neither are we interior decorators; we’ll starve first. Our office office is rather limited as yet, of course; we’re our own office boy and stenographer, and in fact, our own everything. But we like it tremendously.” — “Girl Architects Organize A Firm,” The New York Times, March 8 1914
I love both the excitement of Schenck and Mead, two early female graduates from Columbia University’s architecture school, about their first two commissions — a summer home and a bungalow — and then their subsequent reality check of doing their own paperwork, prints, and typing. There is something so endearing and yet still so relevant to today with how they gush about their work: the balance between the highs of getting new clients and design work and then the behind-the-scenes, not-so-glamorous office work of sending emails and invoices. It’s true and relatable — even more than a century later!
Nelle E. Peters (1884-1974), Prolific Midwest Architect
“‘There’s never been any particular plan of action in my life,’ Mrs. Peters says. ‘I’ve done what there was to do in my work and my life has worked out its own plan.’ It ‘just happened’ that she went into the architect’s office; it ‘just happened’ that she came to Kansas City; it ‘just happened’ that she branched out into the field in which she has met such success.”
“Mrs. Peters first worked in Sioux City, Ia. However, Kansas City is where she first branched out for herself — another thing that ‘just happened.’ It was a dull season and she started doing a few little assignments on her own effort. In this way she took the step of independence which she would not have thought of doing otherwise; she says.” — “Enters Architectural Field Because of Desire for Something Different,” Kansas City Journal, Nov. 21, 1925
Nelle E Peters’ The Ambassador Apartments in Tulsa, Oklahoma. From American Builder, June 1, 1929.
Sometimes, going out on one’s own feels organic, if not inevitable, which is how early female architect Nelle E. Peters made it seem later in her life, when she was a well-established, prolific architect in Kansas City, Missouri (today, there are two historic districts named after her!). While some started their firm with a bang and a New York Times write up (ahem, see above!), others seem to have entered into it more slowly, as some projects or means of income slowed down and other opportunities popped up, as they did for Peters. Although her start may have been gradual, perhaps slow and steady wins the race: by the 1920s, Peters was one of the most successful architects in then-booming Kansas City, completing dozens of major commissions including hotels, apartment buildings, commercial projects, and single-family homes.
Ethel Bailey Furman (1893-1976), First Female African American Architect in Virginia
“She received her early training at Armstrong High School, for there she went to Germantown School for Girls in Philadelphia and while attending school she became interested in the study of architecture and possessing an unusual talent she was encouraged to specialize in their work, deciding to make it her career. She received private tutorship under the direction of the noted Architect Edward R. Williams of New York and upon the completion of the course was given a diploma as a credited [sic] architect. Returning to Richmond [Virginia] in 1923, she immediately began work in drawing plans for homes, churches, and model tenement houses.” — Bill Jordan in New Journal and Guide, September 11, 1937
While journalist Bill Jordan wasn't directly quoting Furman here, he, like other writers, certainly makes it seem as though Furman’s journey to opening her own firm was seamless and “immediately” followed the completion of her academic training. As a journalist for a regional weekly newspaper focusing on African American news, it’s understandable that he didn’t feel the need to focus on the many challenges that Furman faced as both a woman and an African American when she opened her architectural practice — the readers likely implicitly knew of her predetermined setbacks and prejudice. What’s more, her route to opening her own firm was relatively circuitous (but understandably so!), with multiple moves along the East coast, two marriages, and three children.
Furman's architectural drawing for the residence for Mr. and Mrs. Junius A. Snead, Glen Allen (n.d.), in Ethel Bailey Furman Papers, 1928-2003, Accession 41145, Library of Virginia.
Indeed, for Furman, the barriers were twofold: most of her commissions were restricted to serving only the Black community (primarily in segregated neighborhoods in Richmond, Virginia but also in Liberia, Africa) because of her race, and she said that local officials would not accept her as an architect so she was forced to have male contractors sign and submit her drawings for approval. Jordan also did not mention an important factor that helped Furman rather than hindered her professional growth: the fact that her father, Madison J. Bailey, was a prominent local builder/contractor; he served as a mentor to her, taking her to job sites and teaching her about construction, and they often partnered on projects. Among these was the 1923 construction of the birthplace and childhood home of Lawrence Douglas Wilder, who became the first elected Black governor of a U.S. state since Reconstruction. The home was one of her earliest commissions with her father, but was typical of her practicality when it came to designing functional, effective homes for her clients.
Carina Eaglesfield Milligan (1890-1978), Connecticut Architect With A Career Spanning Five Decades
Carina Eaglesfield Milligan’s advertisement for corkboard. From The Journal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, January 1928.
Carina Eaglesfield Milligan’s house in New Haven for Prof. and Mrs. RF Flint. From Architectural Record June 1948.
“Unlike most young architects, Carina Eaglesfield Milligan went into private practice immediately after her graduation from the Cambridge School of Architecture (later taken over by Harvard). Her career had actually started, however, while she was still a student: she was paid $35 for a drawing of a house which not only was built but, she says, is "still good." She has since won a dozen competition prizes lor her house designs. A member of the A.I.A., she holds a National Council Certificate and is registered in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Virginia. In addition to maintaining her own office in New Canaan, Conn., she is an associate of Louis E. Jallade and L. E. Jallade, Jr., New York .” — Architectural Record, June 1948
Talk about immediate! I know most people today embark on opening their own firm with a few solid, promising commissions in hand, but I have yet to meet anyone who was already booking clients while still in school (not to mention thinking, more than 20 years later, that the design was “still good”!). Although the nature of this first project is not known, it’s possible that it involved a connection through her well-off family in her native Indianapolis.
For Eaglesfield Milligan, this was the start of a career that may have begun in 1923 at the age of 33, but lasted well into her 80s: in a letter to the AIA Librarian in the late 1970s, Milligan noted that she had “just finished a large beautiful house in Washington, Connecticut and [was] finishing a small wing on a little church nearby of Black members.” From her primary residence in Sunset Hill, New Canaan, Connecticut, she completed primarily residential projects throughout Connecticut and New York. Although she was educated in the 1920s in more traditional, Classical styles, by the 1930s she was embracing contemporary architecture and designed what is thought to be one of the earliest examples of the International Style in residential architecture in New Haven, Connecticut (in fact, the 1936 home she designed for a leading geology and geophysics professor at Yale was known as “the ice box” by shocked neighbors!). Just a short two years before her death in 1978, she told the AIA, “What a satisfying interest architecture has been!”
Looking for more info? Here are some recommendations:
“Girl Architects Organize A Firm,” The New York Times, March 8, 1914.
New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design by Elizabeth Mills Brown
A thousand women in architecture. Architectural record Vol. 103, (March 1948): 105-113 ; 1948 June, 108-115.
African American Architects : A Biographical Dictionary, 1865-1945 by Dreck Spurlock Wilson
The First American Women Architects by Sarah Allaback