Flourishes and Fame: Early Award-Winning Female Architects

Women's Building at World's Columbian Fair by Sophia Hayden, 1893. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

By Kate Reggev

While the history of competitions in architecture is a long (and, in some cases, problematic) one, women probably made their grand debut on the architectural competition scene in the 1890s, when the planning of the glamorous (but fleeting) World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago was underway.

Chilean-born, MIT-trained Sophia Hayden was awarded the commission to design the Women’s Building at the Exposition, which would essentially set the precedent for design, architecture, and city planning in the decades that followed thanks to its Beaux Arts design and City Beautiful tenets. The Women’s Building was particularly significant because its conceptualization, design, and exhibited contents were to be entirely the work of women — a contrast to the big-name, heavy-hitting male architects like John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Charles B. Atwood who designed the rest of the Fair grounds.

Havre de Grace High School, Maryland by Anna L. Hawkins. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The Women’s Building was the brainchild of Chicago-based female activists (led by the impressive-sounding President of the Board of Lady Managers Mrs. Bertha Palmer) who sought to have an official place for women in both the planning and exhibits at the fair. Works by women ranging from literature and music to fine art and science would all be housed within a building designed by a woman — really driving home the point that women were just as talented and multi-faceted as men.

The competition was announced in February 1891; the Woman's Journal and Suffrage News headlined the announcement "An Unusual Opportunity for Women Architects" and stated that it was "among the things without precedent that are coming up in these days," suggesting that it was a sign of exciting change! Within 6 short weeks, submissions were due. Despite initial concerns about the quality of submissions, to Palmer’s "surprise and delight," there were 13 submissions "almost all of which were good, and five or six excellent," she later told the Board. Frustratingly (but not surprisingly), the monetary award of $1,000 was only one-tenth of what other (male) architects received for other commissioned buildings at the Fair (sigh…), and was in part the reason why Louise Blanchard Bethune, who I think of as the “mother” of female architects in the United States, refused to partake.

Just 21 years old when she won the commission, Hayden was a recent — and, in fact, the first woman — graduate of MIT’s Bachelor of Architecture program. Her design won because of its flourishes like “balconies, loggias, and vases for flowers, it was the lightest and gayest in its general aspect, and consequently best adapted for a joyous and festive occasion,” according to the competition’s three judges. Her thesis at MIT for the design of a fine arts museum likely helped her address the project’s programmatic challenges (ahhh, it’s so rewarding (no pun intended!) when schoolwork actually benefits us later in life!).

Olive Betts' submission for the design of an early Christian Church in 1924.

Anne Dornin's Electrolier in the 1915 Annual of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

The project took several twists and turns during the ensuing design and construction phases (more on the drama of the compromise of her design, her subsequent nervous breakdown, and eventual firing from the project here and here). Nevertheless, Hayden received significant exposure and press from publications across the country. The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Daily Globe, the New York Times, and just about every other major newspaper wrote about her building, paving the way for slow but increasing attention to women in the field.

The impact of Hayden’s experience with the Women’s Building undoubtedly encouraged subsequent women in architecture. Just a few years later in 1896, Anna L. Hawkins, an 1891 graduate from the Maryland Institute of Art and Design (today known as the Maryland Institute, College of Art, or MICA), was awarded the commission for a new high school in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Hawkins was the first woman to study architecture at the school, and was discouraged by a professor who thought that she would have difficulty finding work; however, "Miss Hawkins was determined," the Baltimore Sun noted in 1896, and even specifically commented on her admiration for Hayden, who inspired her. Hawkins "progressed rapidly" with her studies and won the school’s revered Peabody Prize at graduation in 1894; per later reports, she was considered one of the best draughts(wo)men the institution ever educated. Two short years later, she designed what was considered to be "the best public school building in the State outside of the city of Baltimore."

Following the turn of the 20th century, the 1910s were a time of slow but meaningful increases in women’s enrollment in architecture schools, and happily also in their receipt of awards both in and out of school. Anne Howleson Dornin, whose career in the 1920s we previously discussed here, graduated from Columbia’s School of Architecture in 1915 and was the recipient of several awards during her time there: an Honorable Mention in and First Mention in design classes in 1913; multiple placements across several competitions and awards sponsored by Society of Beaux Arts Architects; and fifth place in the Pupin Prize Competition in 1915. That same year, Dornin also won second place in the Loeb Prize from the Society of Beaux Arts Architects, for which she was awarded $25 for her entry in “A Loggia in the Facade of a Private Picture-Gallery.” Her designs ranged in scale from a single light fixture (an electrolier, a.k.a. an electrified chandelier) to entire buildings like a city police station, each creation reflecting the time’s preference for Beaux Arts design and aesthetics — and her skill.

Alberta Raffl Pfeiffer, 1924. Courtesy of The Evening News-Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

1915 was a particularly strong year for female students at Columbia: Dornin’s classmate Verna Cook (later Verna Cook Salomonsky) won a Mention for her sketch of a door to a burial vault and third place for the Loeb Prize of the Society of Beaux Arts Architects. Recent graduate of the school Marcia Mead, with her partner Anna Pendleton Schenck of Schenck and Mead, won first honors in a competition to design a neighborhood center for the City Club of Chicago.

Anne Dornin's City Police Station in the 1913 Annual of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

Into the 1920s, women continued to win awards and competitions: In 1923, Alberta Raffl (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Olive Betts (B. Arch from Columbia), Elizabeth Kimball (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Fay M. Harris (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) all won either Second Medal or Mentions for their designs of "An English 18th Century Pump Room" in a Beaux Arts Society competition. In 1924, Betts won Second Medal for her drawings of the "The Interior of an Early Christian Church" and her entry was published in The American Architect -- you can imagine the sense of pride she must have felt not just having her name published, but also the image of her work!

Not that awards are always an indicator of abilities, but it is interesting to note that many of these women went on to have significant careers in the design world: Raffl became the first woman to win the school medal for academic excellence from the American Institute of Architects and had a prolific career as a residential architect in Connecticut. Betts later went on to become the Assistant Professor of Interior Decoration at the University of Cincinnati and subsequently a professor at the University of Texas, Austin where she taught home decoration in the home economics department. Kimball married a classmate and together had a significant early husband-and-wife partnership in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s.

Perhaps it’s not actually a coincidence that women who won awards while in school went on to maintain careers in the profession. It’s possible that these awards, in addition to publicly proving women’s equal abilities to design at a time when that was hotly debated, also unintentionally to encouraged their female recipients, showing that they were seen and not ignored or dismissed; reminding them what they were capable of; and encouraging them to see themselves as worthy of winning an award, despite the challenges of their chosen course of study and career. Indeed, while some of these awards were relatively small in remuneration or broader public acknowledgement, I can imagine that they were in fact outsized in gratification and inspiration for other women in the field.