Storming the Old Boy's Citadel. Two Pioneer Women Architects Of

Carla Blank and Tania Martin STORMING THE omen” and “architecture” were once mutually exclusive. In an “W1891 address, Louise Blanchard Bethune declared, “it is hardly safe to assert” that a connection even exists between the two words. Some women OLD BOYS’ CITADEL didn’t agree. Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (1823-1902) is credited with works built in the present states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and British Columbia. Born Esther Pariseau in Saint-Elzéar, Québec, the two Pioneer Women Architects of Nineteenth Century North America “Mother with a hammer” was honored by the State of Washington as one of two people to represent it in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856-1913) designed and built works in the Buffalo, New York area, including the Lafayette Hotel, which was one of the eleven most luxurious hotels in the United States when it opened in 1904. STORMING THE OLD BOYS’ CITADEL Mother Joseph’s and Louise Bethune’s signature buildings, Providence Academy, Vancouver, Washington, and the Lafayette Hotel, Buffalo, New York, are both listed on the United States’ National Register of Historic Places. Both buildings are cases of historic preservation and adaptive reuse. Carla Blank and Tania Martin breathe new life into the lives and works of these two remarkable nineteenth-century women.

Carla Blank is the author of Live On Stage! and Rediscovering America: The Making of Multicultural America, 1900–2000. Her articles have appeared in El Pais, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, Green Magazine, Hungry Mind Review, Counterpunch, and Konch. She lives in Oakland, California.

Tania Martin is a professor at the Université Laval School of Architecture in Québec City where she has held the Canada Research Chair in Built Religious Heritage since 2005. She has published essays in scholarly journals on architectural history and North American religious institutional structures. She lives in Québec City.

$29.95

www.barakabooks.com isbn 978-1-77186-013-0 Carla Blank and Tania Martin

Citadel.couv.2.indd 1 2014-11-18 11:55 Citadel.indd 2 2014-12-08 11:22 STORMING THE OLD BOYS’ CITADEL

Citadel.indd 3 2014-12-08 11:22 Citadel.indd 4 2014-12-08 11:22 STORMING THE OLD BOYS’ CITADEL two Pioneer Women Architects of Nineteenth Century North America

Carla Blank and Tania Martin

Montréal

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Cover photo: iStock Back cover photos: Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart and Providence Academy, ca 1901 (Courtesy of Providence Archives, Vancouver, Washington.) Louise Blanchard Bethune and Hotel Lafayette, ca. 1930 (Buffalo History Museum, used by permission.)

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Citadel.indd 6 2014-12-08 11:22 List of Illustrations and Maps

Hotel Lafayette, Buffalo, NY, ca. 1930 16 Graffiti in Cupola, “Mother Joseph was herbefore Providence Academy, Vancouver, WA, ca. 1901 17 any of you!” 104 Place Viger Building, Montreal 23 Birds-eye view of Laundry Building, Canada Life Building, Montreal 24 powerhouse… August 2013 105 Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, Albumen Central Staircase, Providence Academy, Print, 1850s 46 August 2013 106 Albumen Print of J. B. Blanchet, 1883 46 1948 Photo of the Chapel Mother Joseph, ca. 1900 55 Auditorium of Providence Academy, August 2013 109 Mother Joseph’s Headstone, 1823-1902 56 View of the 1873 East Wing, August 2013 110 Blueprint of St. James Mission, Vancouver, WA 61 Redbrick Powerhouse, August 2013 111 Reconstructed Hudson’s Bay Trading Post 64 Cadastral Map of Providence Academy, Vancouver, Portion of a Cadastral Map of Providence Academy, Washington, July 1919 112 1919 66 Louise Blanchard Bethune, ca. 1889 126 First Floor Plan of Providence Academy, 1873 68 Electrical Power Station, 1898 128 Avant-corps of the House of Providence, Members of Bethune, Bethune & Fuchs, ca. 1889 143 August 2013 69 Iroquois Door Company, 1904 145 Hidden Brick, August 2013 72 Drawing of Work Space at Cosack & Koerner First Floor Plan of 1891 Addition to House of Company’s Lithography Plant 147 Providence 76 74th Regiment Armory Building 147 Interior of a Classroom, ca. 1901 77 Livestock Exchange, 1890 147 Photograph of Priest’s House, ca. 1920 78 Public School No. 39, Buffalo, NY 149 1956 Photo of Centennial Celebration of Sisters’ First Floor Plan, Public School No. 39 150 Arrival in the Northwest 81 Residence, 35 Richmond Avenue, Buffalo, NY 152 Photo of Providence Academy Chapel in 1977 92 Spencer Kellogg’s Family Residence, August 2013 153 Statue of Mother Joseph by Felix de Weldon, 1980 96 Niagara at Jersey Street, Flats and Stores 153 Interior of Restored Chapel, August 2013 98 Map of Buffalo’s Downtown, ca. 1904 162 Interior of Restored Chapel, August 2013 98 Lafayette’s Glazed Terra Cotta Roof Detail, Providence Academy, Vancouver, WA, ca. 1901 101 August 2013 166 Avant-corps of Providence Academy, August 1913 102 Original Ground Floor Plan for Lafayette Hotel 167 View of Interstate 5 with Providence Academy in Neo-classical Lobby at Lafayette Hotel, ca. 1904 171 Background 103 Wrought Iron Canopy over Clinton Street View from the Academy Cupola looking towards Entrance to Lafayette Hotel 171 Post Hospital, Fort Vancouver Historical Site 103 Lafayette Hotel’s 1940s Art Moderne-style Lobby 174

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Citadel.indd 7 2014-12-08 11:22 Intarsia Mural of Grain Elevators and Boat 178 Projected Rehabilitation and Alterations Corinthian Capital Topping a Column to the Lafayette 190 in Ballroom/Banquet Room 184 Mural: Washington Greets Lafayette 192 Original Lafayette Hotel Elevator and Grand The Lafayette Hotel Lobby as Renovated in 2012 196 Staircase, ca. 1904 185 The Look of 1904 Lobby at Anatomy shop 199 Mold from an Existing Capital Column 188 Authors Tania Martin and Carla Blank Peacock Alley, August 2013 189 at the Lafayette, August 2013 205 Pan-American Grill & Brewery, August 2013 207

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Foreword 11 Carla Blank on Louise Bethune and Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel Tania Martin on Mother Joseph and Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel 13 Who Deserves to be Called North America’s “First” Woman Architect? 14 Beaux-Arts Rules 15 What’s Inside this Book? 16

Introduction 19 The Citadel to be Stormed 19 An Architect’s Training and Education 26 Women’s Battles and Experiences 29 Alternative Career Choices 37 pa rt I The Sister with a Hammer An Architect Named Joseph 44 An “Enterprising Nun” 47 A Heartful Vocation 52 Holy Trinity of Settlement 57 Providence Faubourg 59 Move to Higher Ground 66 Providence House Vancouver 67 A Brickworks is Born in Vancouver 70 From House of Providence to Providence Academy 73 Providence Academy for Sale 81 Salvation of the Building 84 Mother Joseph Goes to DC, a Landmark is Designated 95 Restoration of the Chapel 98 The Academy for Sale 99 Mother Joseph’s Signature Building 101 Holy Trinity of Development 113 A Bridge Across Time, and Interstate 5 117

Citadel.indd 9 2014-12-08 11:22 pa rt II Saving a Grand Old Lady Jennie Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856 – 1913) 125 The Sources of Buffalo’s Heyday 126 The Making of an Architect 128 How Buffalo Became an Architectural Museum 137 The Architectural Practice of Louise Blanchard Bethune 139 Pioneering Feats 146 Searching Bethune’s Buildings 152 The Business of a Dedicated Professional Woman 154 Private Life 158 The Closing Days 159 Bethune’s Signature Legacy: The Lafayette Hotel 161 The Lafayette’s Neighbors 161 “The Russians want to be French” says Nina L. Khruscheva. So do Americans! 163 A President is Gunned Down 164 Construction History: Putting the Pieces Together 165 The Hotel’s Gilded Grand Opening 169 Doubling the Footprint 170 Prelude of Changes to Come 172 The Founding Families 172 From A Residence of Presidents to a Crack House 175 Rescuing the Fallen Lady and Other Buffalo Architectural Gems 179 The Nineteenth-Century Luxury Hotel as a Model for Modern Living 181 The Lafayette Hotel’s 43-Million-Dollar Restoration 186 Creating a Place in the Historical Record 197

C onclusion 201 “Storytelling is part of the game.”—Tania Martin 201 “Women architects are not confined 204 to modest projects.”—Carla Blank 204 Investing in making a future for women architects 209

Bbi liography 211

A cknowledgements 229

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om e early women architects achieved a another hotel located at the square’s intersection of Smeasure of fame, and some are now obscure, Washington and Clinton Streets, which he noticed and it is certainly possible there are women who had a dilapidated look, he saw a plaque indicat- have yet to surface in the existing literature. This ing that it had opened in 1904 as a luxury hotel, book focuses on two women who began to practice the Hotel Lafayette (also known as the Lafayette architecture in North America before the turn of Hotel), designed by the first American woman to the twentieth century. be called a professional architect. When Ishmael Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (born returned home, he told me about this building and Esther Pariseau, 1823-1902) is representative of asked if I had heard of its architect, whose work he nameless pioneer women who helped to build nine- had never noticed or heard talk of in all his years teenth-century North America. growing up in Buffalo. Amazed that such a feat had Louise Bethune (born Jennie Louise Blanchard, managed to escape even Ishmael’s relentless curi- 1856-1913) is representative of the “exceptional osity, I began to investigate this architect’s story. women” admitted into the architecture profession, As my research continued, I came to understand following another pattern that continued well into that Ishmael’s experience is typical, as Louise the twentieth century. Blanchard Bethune, who without question estab- Our selection of these two women happened lished many “firsts” for women in architecture, has somewhat accidentally. remained practically non-existent in the nation’s historical record. I wondered whether this dete- Carla Blank on Louise Bethune riorating architectural legacy of Mrs. Bethune’s, and Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel hidden in plain sight for so long, reflected the fact In 2005, as guest speaker at Buffalo’s Harlem that women have found architecture one of the Book Fair, my partner, Ishmael Reed, was put up most difficult fields to enter because, from ancient at a downtown hotel in the vicinity of Buffalo’s times, when we think of master builders, we think Lafayette Square. As he walked into the lobby of of men.

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Citadel.indd 11 2014-12-08 11:22 Further research turned up evidence of over So Robin said he would publish the book if it was thirty women who had begun architectural studies, about North American women architects, not just training, or practices before the turn of the twenti- those based in the United States, and if a Canadian eth century in the U.S. or Canada, or in territories co-author could be found who understood French. now within those countries’ borders. This fact was How to manage finding the right person to fit the makings of a book. this bill? Thinking the best possible co-author Shopping the book proposal around to various would be a Canadian architectural historian bilin- publishers, all expressed interest in the subject but gual in French and English, as Mother Joseph’s cor- politely declined because they assessed it as too respondence was written in French, I remembered expensive a project to achieve an acceptable return that Kelly Hayes McAloney, one of the Buffalo on their investment. Then, accompanying Ishmael architects who first introduced me to the Hotel on a book launch and tour of Montreal, Toronto, Lafayette, was born in Canada. When I asked her if and New York, I related this experience to Robin she could suggest a potential candidate, she put me Philpot, his publisher, and the head of Baraka in touch with Despina Stratigakos, an architectural Books. He was intrigued with the idea and asked historian born in Montreal, who sent me to McGill me if any Canadians were among these women. University-based architectural historian Annmarie As I reeled off the list of names, including Mother Adams, who in turn suggested Tania Martin, who Joseph of the Sacred Heart, Robin immediately not only fit all of my qualifications but goes one said that he bet she was a Quebecer as her order, better as she has been a long-time specialist in the the Sisters of Providence, was founded by Émile built environments of Catholic religious communi- Gamelin in 1840 in Montreal. He took me to visit ties. We finally managed to meet at Université Laval the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where the in Quebec City during Ishmael’s second Canadian young women in charge of their bookstore assured book tour. Robin, Ishmael, and I climbed the Saint- me that there were no books on women practicing Joseph staircase, whose wooden steps were worn architecture in Canada in the nineteenth century. down into polished curves by students over some They stated that the earliest Canadian woman two hundred years, to the top floor of the School of architect was Marjorie Hill, who became the first Architecture, where we found Tania on a teaching Canadian woman registered as an architect when break from her design studio course. After some the Alberta Association of Architects accepted discussion, we agreed to write this book together. her as a member in 1925. However, a day in the Neither Tania nor I were prepared for the many McGill University library proved them wrong, as discoveries in store for us as we explored the lives I found Constructing Careers: Profiles of Five Early of these women. For me, Bethune’s career not only Women Architects in British Columbia, an exhibi- told the story of a woman who succeeded despite tion catalogue published in 1966 by the Women in long odds, but her story is also the story of her Architecture Exhibits Committee that included times. Mother Joseph and confirmed her Canadian roots.

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Citadel.indd 12 2014-12-08 11:22 Tania Martin on Mother Joseph Providence buildings attributed to Mother Joseph and Storming the Old Boys’ Citadel had long disappeared, except Providence Academy, I first heard rumors that Mother Joseph had been formerly the House of Providence, built in 1873 in an architect while writing my master’s thesis. I Vancouver, Washington, as an orphan asylum, hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time, figur- school, and administrative seat of the Sisters in ing that if it were the case, she would show up again; the Northwest. Unfortunately, we were not able to and she did. Deborah Rink, a historic preservation visit the whole of the complex. At that time, the consultant who had been studying the landscapes chapel was being readied for a wedding and the of the Sisters of St. Ann in Vancouver, British auditorium decorated for the reception to follow. So Columbia, contacted me. She was putting together it was a delight in August 2013 when Yvette Payne an exhibition on the careers of early women archi- took Carla and me on a complete tour, from attic tects in that province and had heard about my to basement, of each of the wings of Providence Ph.D. work on the Grey Nuns and the Sisters of Academy as well as to the extant secondary struc- Providence, both based in Montreal. Although tures. From the outside, and the little I had seen I had not yet collected information on Mother of the inside, not much had changed since my last Joseph, my article “Housing the Grey Nuns: Power, visit fifteen years earlier, although the building was Women, and Religion in fin-de-siècle Montréal” slightly worse for wear. featured another sister, Marie-Anne Falardeau, or In the autumn of 1999, I learned that my pro- Sœur Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix in religion. She had posal for a paper on Mother Joseph was accepted produced a series of as-built plans of a number of for the 2000 meeting of the Society of Architectural the Grey Nuns’ buildings in Montreal at the turn of Historians’ session on Women Architects. Rink the twentieth century using the same architectural kindly sent me documentation that she had conventions employed by contemporary architects assembled on Mother Joseph for her book Spirited on her ink-on-linen drawings. Women: A History of Catholic Sisters in British In June 1998, I embarked on a thirty-day cross- Columbia. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner, a professor in continent trip with my mother, who insisted on the University of Washington Department of accompanying me to visit as many sites as pos- Architecture and editor and co-author of Shaping sible where the two French-Canadian Catholic Seattle Architecture, having noticed the title of my sisterhoods had lived and worked, and that were talk in the Society of Architectural Historians’ con- accessible from the major North American high- ference program, wrote to me saying that he and ways. As a graduate student, my meager resources his colleagues in Seattle had some concerns about did not allow me to fly into the remote northern “a considerable mythology surrounding Mother locations or to drive five-hundred-mile detours to Joseph.” Delighted that someone from outside see first-hand the buildings the sisters had erected, the Pacific Northwest was interested in Mother although we did make a number of smaller forays Joseph’s career, David Rash mailed me copies of the to distant locations. The majority of the Sisters of article transcriptions he had compiled in combing

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Citadel.indd 13 2014-12-08 11:22 Seattle, Portland, and Walla Walla newspapers for hundred and twenty new buildings, renovations, or the book project. A good number of these listed additions to buildings. local practicing architects with whom Mother We believe that, besides the fact that women Joseph had worked. With this material I could architects are routinely not included in architec- begin to address the question of whether we could tural history books, omissions of Mother Joseph consider her as a bona fide architect by placing her and Bethune are likely related to how their achieve- practice within the history of the profession. My ments are judged. In Mother Joseph’s case it may presentation, however, had raised more questions mostly be attributed to believing she does not than it had answered. So when Carla invited me fit into definitions of what constitutes an archi- to co-author this book, it presented yet another tect’s job description. A late July 2014 search of opportunity to untangle the competing claims the Dynamic National Archive, a Wikipedia-like around Mother Joseph’s accomplishments and to database created to champion women in archi- discover a bit more about this person. tecture that is maintained on the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation website, had yet to include Who Deserves to be Called North America’s her name in their now copious database of women “First” Woman Architect? architects. Although bestowing the honor of who was “first” While Bethune was listed in that archive, she can have great significance, it is not our intent to has been generally omitted, barely noticed, or center this work around such a discussion because, dismissed in standard histories of architecture, first of all, it should be clear that any “firsts” we often according to whether a writer thinks she talk about refer to women of European American deserves the distinction of being called the first ancestry who practiced architecture. In terms of American woman to practice as a professional simple chronology, it is accurate and fair to say architect. However, it is easily verifiable that in 1885, that between Mother Joseph and Louise Bethune, four years after Blanchard opened her own office Mother Joseph was one of the first European in Buffalo, New York, (now married and known American women working in architecture. Bethune professionally as Louise Blanchard Bethune), she earned her first building design credits in 1881, the became the first woman in the United States to year she opened her architecture office in Buffalo, be acknowledged by her peers as a professional for two houses, a store, and a stable. By 1881, Mother architect when she was voted into membership in Joseph was credited with having built at least a total a professional architecture association, the Western of seventeen schools and hospitals for her order and Association of Architects (WAA). This distinction the communities they served. Mother Joseph died was followed in 1888 by the honor of becoming the in 1902. By that time she had overseen construction first woman member of the American Institute of of between twenty-eight and thirty-two structures, Architects (AIA) and then in 1889, the first woman not counting renovation work. By Bethune’s death Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1913, she and her office had completed at least one (FAIA). Controversies around the importance of

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Citadel.indd 14 2014-12-08 11:22 Mrs. Bethune’s FAIA honor are grounded in AIA and Roman traditions and their reinterpretations procedures for granting the honorific of “Fellow” at during the Renaissance. It was widely considered the time Bethune gained her FAIA status, as com- the most prestigious and rigorous architectural pared to different requirements needed to receive training Europeans or Americans could find any- that higher distinction later. where, although it did not admit women until Then there are those who question the worthi- 1898. Many historians rank Beaux-Arts as the rul- ness of Bethune’s work. Those objections appear ing European academy until 1919, when architect to be related to a charge of “lack of originality” in Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, a school in her designs, an odd objection, since for close to Weimar, Germany. Its mission to make arts a part thirty years she conducted a successful business of everyday life was dominated by the principles of very similar to many architects of her time, com- “form follows function,” and that everyone should bining time-honored styles with contemporary be able to afford functional, well-designed environ- technological innovations. Design innovators, like ments, not just the wealthy. “International Style” is contemporaries Louis Sullivan, H. H. Richardson, a term that came to be interchangeably applied to and Frank Lloyd Wright, were the exceptions then, works by its teachers and graduates. as they are today. Whether they are aware of this or not, most North Americans know the architectural prin- Beaux-Arts Rules ciples of Beaux-Arts intimately, as our ongoing In considering the question of who can be or has romance with various eclectic, European, period been considered an architect, it might be helpful to revivals can readily be documented throughout discuss the kinds of structures these women were our cities in their twenty-first-century urban and building, because they in fact differed little from suburban McMansion manifestations. Some of those attributed to their male counterparts. In the the most famous Beaux-Arts buildings in both the nineteenth century, almost all architects and build- United States and Canada are each nation’s land- ers espoused Beaux-Arts principles in their designs mark government buildings. The 1876 Centennial for city halls, schools, banks, post offices, hospitals, in Philadelphia and famed White City of the 1893 and other institutional buildings, and for hotels, World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (real- country clubs, residential enclave developments, ized under the direction of Daniel Burnham as well and private estates. Louise Bethune and Mother as McKim, Mead & White) invigorated resurgence Joseph were no exceptions. It was the dominant of the form, and at the urban scale it took the name idiom in North America and the hallmark of École City Beautiful Movement. You will find references nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts training. to many North American buildings that employ The School of Fine Arts, formed in the late 1700s Beaux-Arts principles as you read the following in Paris, taught its students the appropriate histor- chapters. ical styles to employ for particular building types and contexts, drawing heavily upon classical Greek

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Citadel.indd 15 2014-12-08 11:22 What’s Inside this Book? tural profession evolved into the standards in place The Introduction explains the “citadel” to be in 2014. stormed—the changing definitions of the term Both of their signature buildings are currently “architect,” how the training and business of archi- listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic tecture developed in North America, and how Places: Mother Joseph’s House of Providence in women have made their way into a profession that Vancouver, Washington; and Louise Bethune’s traditionally functioned more like a gentlemen’s club. Hotel Lafayette in Buffalo, New York. Both build- Part I, “The Sister with a Hammer,” tells Mother ings are still standing although each architect’s Joseph’s story; Part II, “Saving a Grand Old Lady,” original structure has been changed by various tells Louise Bethune’s story. Each of these chapters owners and others involved in their additions, relate how, working on opposite sides of the North modifications, and renovations. They have become American continent, these women took two very testaments to their ongoing importance to their different routes into the field of architecture and home communities, in part because of the two how, over the years they were active, their practices women who were a large force behind their exis- demonstrated much about the ways the architec- tence, but also because the layers of history encap- sulated in each building carry essential keys to the identities of each place. The Fort Vancouver National Trust is working to purchase Mother Joseph’s landmark building, now known as The Academy, in Vancouver, Washington. They are proposing a sixteen-million-dollar investment for its preservation and renovation as the centerpiece of a larger mixed-use master plan for the seven-acre campus on which it sits to be developed in partnerships between private and public entities. On an even grander scale, Bethune’s Hotel Lafayette in downtown Buffalo, New York, has just benefitted from a forty-three-million-dollar renovation project, which has brought it back from the blighted condition it had deteriorated into during the past few decades. Completed in 2012 and now officially known as The Hotel @ Lafayette, it has been restored to its former glamour as a luxury destination. Hotel Lafayette, Louise Blanchard Bethune’s signature In the Conclusion we talk about what we have building, as it was circa 1930. learned from this project.

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Citadel.indd 16 2014-12-08 11:22 Providence Academy, Vancouver, Washington, ca. 1901. (Providence Archives, Seattle, Washington.)

In writing this book, our intention was to go secure. Mostly, however, we offer this book in hom- beyond “adding women” to the history of North age to all North American women who pioneered American architecture. It is our wish to help Mother in a profession that to this day is not an easy one to Joseph’s and Louise Bethune’s legacies become more work in, especially if you are a woman.

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arla presumed Tania was an architect, as field of architecture. They punctuate the historical Cdo most people when they learn she obtained, narrative. in 1992, her bachelor’s degree in architecture. At Just as you cannot practice as a lawyer until you that time, the five-year professional program was pass an exam that admits you to the bar, in Canada the entry point into the profession, although the and the United States you can only be called an Master of Architecture has since superseded it. architect if you pass a licensing exam and are reg- Rather than embark on the required internship istered. A provincial or state architecture associa- leading to written exams and registration, Tania tion only has the legal authority to emit a license earned a post-professional degree from McGill to practice within its jurisdiction. It will consider University, specializing in the study of built envi- applications once the candidate has succeeded in ronments, before earning a Ph.D. in Architectural completing the following requirements: earned a History from the University of California, Berkeley. degree from an accredited program in architecture These credentials allow her to teach history/the- or, more rarely, fulfilled a regimented apprentice- ory courses as well as design studio in a school ship; passed a battery of exams set by the National of architecture, although many institutions pre- Certification Boards of the country where he or fer studio instructors to have an architectural she will practice; and served the required number practice, and hence registration with the state or of hours of internship under the supervision of a provincial architectural association. The Royal practicing architect. Upon paying his or her annual Architectural Institute of Canada, however, offers dues and liability insurance, the newly approved membership to architecture school faculty. In pre- practitioner retains the privilege of officially stamp- senting a history of the architectural profession in ing his or her drawings as a bona fide architect. North America, we thought Tania’s experiences, as This restrictive definition of “architect” is fairly a participant in this field, provide a contemporary recent. It dates to the late nineteenth century. example of the complexities surrounding the evo- Professionalization was uneven in its progress, lution of standards and women’s choices within the temporally and geographically. The process of

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Citadel.indd 19 2014-12-08 11:22 professionalization spanned the better part of the Workman in a Building, he who designs the Model, nineteenth century. In North America, the rate of or draws the Plot, Plan or Draught of the whole formation of associations followed no regional pat- Fabrick; whose Business it is to consider the whole tern, and licensing laws were not enacted through- Manner and Method of the Building; and also to out all fifty states and territories until 1968, and compute the Charge and Expence” according to in Canada’s provinces and territories until 2001, The Builder’s Dictionary, first published in 1734 and with the passage of the Northwest Territories widely circulated in British America. The definition Architects Act, although all of the provinces had was perhaps too all-encompassing. As Dankmar effective legislation by 1933. When Newfoundland Adler pointed out to the architects assembled at and Labrador joined the Canadian Confederation the Second Annual Convention of the Western in 1949, it enacted an Architects Act. When it was Association of Architects in 1885, “Every man… can incorporated in 1980, the Architects Licensing constitute himself as an architect by calling himself Board of Newfoundland and Labrador took over one… We are architects only because we have called responsibility for registration matters from that ourselves architects, that is all.” province’s architects association. Adler was speaking of the realities of practices Moreover, the terms “architect” and “profes- in his time, before the passage of distinct laws reg- sional” have not always been synonymous. The ulating architecture as a profession. Until archi- professions—medical, legal, architectural—initially tecture became the object of professionalization in “a premodern and preindustrial invention of eigh- North America, anyone who created architectural teenth-century England,” as architectural historian drawings and supervised construction, be they a Mary Woods points out in From Craft to Profession: designer, draftsman, builder, master artisan, or The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-Century master mechanic, or a gentleman, planter, or mer- America, had to evolve to respond to new con- chant who undertook building contracts, all could ditions, namely capitalism, urbanization, and call themselves architects as they were ultimately industrialization. in positions of authority and took responsibility for The term “architect” has its origins in the Greek the building. They directed the tradesmen and arti- word architekton, which translates to “master car- sans actually involved in preparing the materials, penter.” Although the term fell out of common assembling the structural members, cladding the usage in the Middle Ages, when those responsi- exterior walls, covering the roof, installing doors ble for construction were referred to as master and windows, partitioning rooms, and finishing masons and builders and patrons, the term “archi- the interiors. Yet even this elastic description omits tect” was re-employed to describe the Brunelleschis, those people deemed to have superior skills or Bramantes, and Michelangelos of the Renaissance. knowledge of building within a culture or commu- As Woods explains, they “were not building crafts- nity, those who had a combination of expertise in men and did not belong to the construction guilds.” assorted crafts, calculation, aesthetics, and rituals By the eighteenth century, an architect was “a Master and passed them on from one generation to the

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Citadel.indd 20 2014-12-08 11:22 Citadel.indd 233 2014-12-08 11:23 Carla Blank and Tania Martin STORMING THE omen” and “architecture” were once mutually exclusive. In an “W1891 address, Louise Blanchard Bethune declared, “it is hardly safe to assert” that a connection even exists between the two words. Some women OLD BOYS’ CITADEL didn’t agree. Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (1823-1902) is credited with works built in the present states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and British Columbia. Born Esther Pariseau in Saint-Elzéar, Québec, the two Pioneer Women Architects of Nineteenth Century North America “Mother with a hammer” was honored by the State of Washington as one of two people to represent it in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C. Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856-1913) designed and built works in the Buffalo, New York area, including the Lafayette Hotel, which was one of the eleven most luxurious hotels in the United States when it opened in 1904. STORMING THE OLD BOYS’ CITADEL Mother Joseph’s and Louise Bethune’s signature buildings, Providence Academy, Vancouver, Washington, and the Lafayette Hotel, Buffalo, New York, are both listed on the United States’ National Register of Historic Places. Both buildings are cases of historic preservation and adaptive reuse. Carla Blank and Tania Martin breathe new life into the lives and works of these two remarkable nineteenth-century women.

$29.95

www.barakabooks.com isbn 978-1-77186-013-0 Carla Blank and Tania Martin

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