The Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation, a group that seeks to elevate women in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professions, launched a new website titled “Pioneering Women of American Architecture.”

The website presents historically significant women practitioners as selected by a jury of prominent architectural historians and based on criteria of the highest standards, according to Cynthia Phifer Kracauer, AIA, executive director of the foundation.

The educational website has supporters such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Forest City and dozens of architects and design firms. (See the full list below.)

Pioneering Women of American Architecture began in 2012 with two women, Wanda Bubriski and Beverly Willis, who wanted to uncover the work that American women architects had done during the early decades of the twentieth century. 

As stated by BWAF, "Within the context of broad social changes from 1848 to the adoption of the Nineteenth Constitutional Amendment, women have risen from the status of chattel to almost full participation in contemporary politics and society. This online collection will benefit architectural scholars, historians, educators, students, practitioners, and the general public."

The website was made by co-directors Mary McLeod and Victoria Rosner, and it serves as a special collection within the Dynamic National Archive of Women in Architecture. "The Collection of Women of 20th-Century American Architecture is a special, peer reviewed, juried collection to be housed in the Dynamic National Archive, preserving the legacies of approximately 50 historically significant women—architects, designers, critics, curators and policymakers, born before 1940—who contributed to creating the American built environment between 1880 and 1980,” say McLeod and Rosner.

SUPPORTERS

• Forest City
• Leers Weinzapfel Associates
• Jane Chmielinski
• Jacquiline Zehner
• Susan Rodriguez
• Mary-Jean Eastman
• Nancy Alexander
• Ronette Riley
• Erleen Hatfield
• John Carey
• Susan Mitchell-Ketzes
• Marion White
• Wanda Bubriski
• Claire Weisz
• Roger Williams University

PIONEER SPONSORS

• Alice Constance Austin is sponsored by Jill Lerner, FAIA
• Florence Knoll Bassett is sponsored by Renee Charles
• Louise Blanchard Bethune is sponsored by Kelly Hayes McAlonie, AIA
• Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter is sponsored by Women of FXFOWLE
• Natalie Griffin de Blois is sponsored by Marilyn Jordan Taylor, FAIA
• Ray Kaiser Eames is sponsored by Marion Weiss, FAIA
• Ethel Bailey Furman is sponsored by S. Lindsay Klein, AIA, Lindsay Architecture Studio, P.C
• Marion Mahony Griffin is sponsored by Jennifer Sage, FAIA and Sara Caples, AIA
• Ada Louise Huxtable is sponsored by Women of FXFOWLE
• Sibyl Moholy-Nagy is sponsored by Architecture Research Office
• Theodate Pope is sponsored by Christina Davis
• Norma Merrick Sklarek is sponsored by Women of FXFOWLE
• Cloethiel Woodard Smith is sponsored by LandDesign, Inc.
• Beverly Ann Willis is sponsored by Kristi Ambrosetti

Visit the website at https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org.