Women of Steel and Stone: 22 Inspirational Architects, Engineers, and Landscape Designers
PART THREE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS Beatrix Farrand Planting Seeds 167 Ellen Biddle Shipman Dean of American Landscape Architecture 176 Marian Cruger Coffin Covered All Grounds 184 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander The Art of the Possible 192 Carol R Johnson Nature and Culture 203 Martha Schwartz Modern Art and Landscape 212 Acknowledgments 221 Resources 225 Notes 231 Bibliography 243 Index 249
1 THE WOMEN WHO helped build the world we live in female architects engineers and landscape architects had strong wills that helped them break through into professions at a time when women were not welcome or sometimes were not even allowed These women had strengths passions and interests as they were growing up that led them to accomplish amazing achievements They were all determined women who wanted to create whether it was a building a bridge or a beautiful environment Most of these spirited women saw the problems they faced entering male-dominated fields more as stumbling blocks or challenges than as outright discrimination With a few exceptions the support of their families helped them reach their goals The women’s suffrage right to vote movement the civil rights movement social reform America’s industrial lead ers and the Roaring Twenties all influenced their diverse life stories Women have always played an important role in the creation of houses and buildings In the hunter-gatherer days women tended to the home while men went off to hunt From teepee INTRODUCTION
2 INTRODUCTION to cave to log cabin women have always worked to create safe nurturing and healthy environments for their families and communities and there is early evidence that shows women assuming the role of builder In 16th-century France Kather ine Briçonnet designed and supervised the building of the Cha teau de Chenonceau between 1513 and 1524 while her husband was away fighting at war In 17th-century England 19-year-old Lady Elizabeth Wilbraham traveled and studied architecture in the Netherlands and Italy while on her honeymoon She later set up an architectural office and designed Wotton House in Buckinghamshire and possibly 400 other buildings Sir Chris topher Wren now known as England’s greatest architect may have studied under her and created 18 churches with the help of her designs before he went on to build more than 50 churches including St Paul’s Cathedral in London In Families and Farmhouses in Nineteenth-Century America author Sally McMurry presents many home plans designed by women which were published in 19th-century farm journals The 1847 house plan by Matilda Howard of Zanesville Ohio won the 20 prize from the Committee on Farm Dwellings for the New York State Agricultural Society Mrs Howard’s design provided detailed instructions on site and room placement materials and cost Mrs Howard explained In the construc tion of this plan it has been my object to combine utility and beauty as far as practicable with the labor-saving principle After Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 she and her sister Catharine wrote The American Woman’s Home in 1869 Their book lays out the domestic concerns of the 19th century and details a house plan with particular attention paid to areas often ignored by male designers of the 19th century such as the kitchen Various chapters concern the need for exer cise both physical and mental fresh air gardening hygiene
INTRODUCTION 3 clothing reform removing binding corsets and the ventilation and heating of the home In the late 19th century women from middle-income fami lies if they worked outside the home were typically expected to enter nursing teaching or writing professions In her pop ular self-help book What Can a Woman Do Mrs M L Rayne wrote about the careers that were socially acceptable for a woman They included medicine law agriculture manufac turing business dressmaking education and the arts Careers in architecture engineering and landscape architecture were not mentioned Women from wealthy families were told to use their extra energies by doing charity work The medical com munity in 1900 even gave excess energy and overuses of intel lect a name neurasthenia or nervousness The neurasthenia cure for men was to send them out west to rope cattle hunt and hang out with cowboys A few men who went west for the cure were writer Mark Twain painter Thomas Eakins and Theodore Roosevelt Meanwhile the cure for women was for private doctors to seclude them possibly in bed with no visitors no books and a bland diet This was the pre scription for reformer Jane Addams and writer Edith Wharton In 1900 when 29-year-old Martha Brookes Hutcheson decided to enter the new program in landscape design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT her parents begged her to change her mind for fear that her decision would affect their social standing They even offered to send her to Europe to allow her to design their family estate But Martha said I was fired with the desire in spite of the fact that it was considered almost social suicide and distinctly matrimonial suicide for a woman to enter any profession Martha ultimately chose to attend MIT though she circled the block three times before getting the courage to climb the steps to the university
