Laying the Groundwork: Women in American Architecture

In this episode, we revisit the first significant effort to publicly tell the under-told stories of American women in architecture: “Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective.”

On view at the Brooklyn Museum from February to April of 1977, the groundbreaking exhibition and simultaneous book, curated and edited by Susana Torre, defined the state of play for women in the architecture profession.

Alienated by the profound hostility expressed by the AIA, women architects found an accepting cohort at the Architectural League of New York. We organized. We canvassed. We raised our consciousnesses. The project team identified subjects so previously obscured as to be unknown, and then with the energy and drive of a furious mob, they broke through and laid the groundwork for scholarship, social change, and recognition of women architects for the next fifty years.