Louise Blanchard Bethune
Jennie Louise Blanchard Bethune, nee Blanchard ( born July 21, 1856 in Waterloo, Seneca County, † 18 December 1913 in New York City ), was the first professional architect in the United States and among other things, first female member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA ).
Biography
Blanchard was the daughter of math teacher and local Board of Waterloo Dalson Wallace Blanchard and teacher Emma Melona Blanchard, nee Williams. 1864 were in Forestville Louise's siblings, the twins Edwin Williams and Clara White, was born.
As is customary at this time for girls, Louise was up to the age of eleven homeschooled, but later attended until 1874 successfully from high school in Buffalo. In vain she tried to study at the newly founded school of architecture at Cornell University to get, continued his education for two years, taught the way to school and traveled around until they W the offer of a conventional training for architectural draftsman in the architectural firm of Richard Alfred Waite and Franklin. Caulkins might think that in Buffalo.
Structures
With the Canadian architect Robert Armour Bethune, whom she had met in their training with Waite and married in December 1881, she opened previously in October of the same year a joint architectural office. Parallel found in the Buffalo IX. Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Women, attended by 975 women and 25 men participated. The opening of the architectural firm was mentioned at this event as a major entry of women into the professional world of architects in the United States.
Blanchard designed, in part, in cooperation, in western New York, among others, a bank building, factories, hotels, residential buildings and 18 schools, including the Lockport Union High School, a large part of the Springville - Griffith Institute Central School District, the Iroquois Door Plant Company warehouse, the complex of Buffalo Weaving Company in the Chandler Street, the music store Denton Cottier & in innovative steel frame construction, women's Prison correctional Facility Erie County and the East Buffalo Livestock Exchange. They also constructed the tribune of the later Offerman baseball stadium, the military arsenal, which was later converted to Elmwood Music Hall and the Buffaloer Kensington Church. In Buffalo today is still the 1904 built Lafayette Hotel at Lafayette Square. The construction of the hotel, which at that time was one of the 15 best in the country, earned her a million dollars.
On April 24, 1883 she gave birth to their son Charles Williams Bethune. To be able to muster more time for her son, was admitted in 1882 during pregnancy William L. Fox as the third architect and partner in the office of Blanchard.
Blanchard was very involved for gender equality in working life. In 1891 she refused to take part in a competition for the design for a Woman 's Building for the World 's Columbian Exposition, because the unequal Price doping "Equal pay for equal work " violated their principle, for the awarding of the contract was for male candidates with U.S. $ 10,000 - and for women with only U.S. $ 1,000 - doped.
Due to their poor health condition pulled Blanchard 1907 in the proximity of her son, who practiced at that same time as a urologist. Her husband followed her some time later. The data on the year of their Zurruhesetzung vary from 1905 to 1910. In her handwritten will, dated January 4, 1908, they are even the year 1908 as the date. From the Testament also shows that it was at this time due to financial insolvency of their partners already the sole owner of the architectural firm.
1910, in the United States already 50 architects.
Memberships and offices
In the Western Association of Architects ( WAA ) in Chicago Blanchard's work met with enthusiasm and it was recorded in 1885 in the connection after there was already decided in favor of a recording female colleagues. The WAA they also got the Office of the Vice President. She was also from 1886 main organizer of the Buffaloer Architects Association, which later became Buffalo Society of Architects, the 1891 Chapter of the American Institute of Architects ( AIA). She herself has already been recorded in April 1888 at the AIA as a member and received at the time when the WAA went up in the AIA in 1889, where, due to their conventional training course as the degree of Fellow of the AIA ( FAIA ). In the AIA they also engaged in common with others for the By Brin narrowing of a law to regulate the professional requirements of architects in the United States.