Imagine being paid to dream.
Envision a skyscraper with an open plaza on the 100th floor. Or a
”necklace” of neighborhood parks linked by the Chicago Transit Authority. These are just a few of the visions on the drawing boards of some of Chicago`s most up-and-coming women architects.
Many of the dreams will remain in a two-dimensional world, abstract pencil marks on a drafting board. But Chicago women have been making strides, turning symmetrical lines with carefully calculated proportions into solid walls that shelter and shape the lives of Chicagoans.
Although women have yet to make a significant impact on Chicago`s signature skyline, they are steering major community projects-from apartment complexes and airports to schools, shopping centers and village halls. Women currently make up only about 7 percent of all architects, according to Bureau of Labor statistics, but the field is bracing itself for the largest crop of female graduates ever.
In 1975 only 14 percent of architecture students were female, according to the professional accreditation board. A decade later, that number doubled. Today, in incoming classes at prestigious Eastern schools such as Yale, women outnumber men.
That`s heartening news to most of today`s working women architects, who remember when the number of women architects in Chicago could be counted on one hand, when they were the only females in their graduating classes.
Women still strive for recognition and respect. As architects, they have yet to come close to the master status of a Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, or to the star status of I.M. Pei, Helmut Jahn or Michael Graves. But many women have an honored place in architectural history. The opulent Hearst ”castle”, San Simeon, (showplace home of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst) in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., was designed by Julia Morgan (1872-1957). And Louise Bethune
(1856-1913), who broke sexual stereotypes by designing New York`s Buffalo baseball stadium in 1898, was the first woman member of the American Institute of Architects, the profession`s official national organization.
Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Bethune`s induction into the AIA, a traveling exhibit presents the work of more than 100 past and present women architects. ”That Exceptional One: Women in Architecture, 1888-1988,” is on view this month at the St. Louis (Mo.) Design Center. (A Chicago showing is in negotiations.)
In Chicago, a select few women frequently are mentioned among the best, boldest and brightest architects. Their work is highly regarded by critics, colleagues and the AIA.
They are not flamboyant figures. Their personal styles are businesslike, no-nonsense. While they are well into their careers, ranging in age from 30 to 50-plus, they have yet to hit stride in a profession that considers the first 10 years on the job ”basic training.”
There is Diane Legge, partner of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, currently working on Arlington Park Race Track; Cynthia Weese, principal of Weese Hickey Weese, designer of Chestnut Place Apartments on the Near North Side; Margaret McCurry, of Tigerman, McCurry Architects, at work on the Chicago Bar Association`s new headquarters in the South Loop; Carol Ross Barney, who began her own firm in 1981; Gertrude Lempp Kerbis, an AIA fellow, a pioneer among Chicago women architects and now a real estate developer as well.
Other names surfacing among the top women architects in Chicago are partners Kathryn Quinn and Linda Searl; Carol Phelan and Geraldine McCabe-Miele; Tannys Langdon; Roula Alakiotou; Debra Doyle; and Pao-Chi Chang.
In time, women will be in demand because they are the brightest students, says Chang, a founder of Chicago Women in Architecture and one of 10 women tenured professors at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
”As time goes on there will be women architects who will be considered masters,” Chang says. ”It won`t be too long.”
Sandlots to city lots
As children, these women recall, they knew they were ”different.” They built elaborate forts in sandlots, practiced math equations for fun and delighted in visiting local construction sites. A father or grandfather or uncle played an important supporting role in most of their careers. At some point each had to overcome great obstacles to reach her dreams.
Most have families; all have been active in the AIA. Yet these women and about 1,300 others like them around the nation-Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who is creating Florida communities, Los Angeles architects Margot Siegel, Norma Sklarek and Kate Diamond-work in relative anonymity.
”The major problem is that men (clients and employers) are not used to thinking of women architects as being potentially successful,” says Ortrude White, an Atlanta architect and past president of the AIA Women`s Committee.
Exhibits such as ”That Exceptional One” are important because they showcase women`s work and give it credibility, says Ross Barney, national chair of the AIA women`s committee. ”We want to make these women stars.”
The exhibit`s title is taken from a rankling statement by architect Pietro Belluschi, who wrote in 1955, ”I cannot, in whole conscience, recommend architecture as a profession for girls. . . . The obstacles are so great that it takes an exceptional girl to make a go of it. If she insisted on becoming an architect, I would try to dissuade her. If then she was still determined, I would give her my blessing. She could be that exceptional one.” For more than a century, Chicago has been a magnet for aspiring architects as well as an inspirational home to many of the masters. Women have made their mark here, too, beginning with Sophia Hayden, who designed the Woman`s Building at the World`s Columbian Exhibition in 1893. The experience was so wrenching, she collapsed with a nervous breakdown and never designed another building.
Marion Mahoney Griffin (1871-1962) was more prolific. The first woman to receive a bachelor`s of architecture degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she also was the first to receive an Illinois architecture license.
Progress for women architects in Chicago came slowly because there simply weren`t enough of them. In 1971, there were only eight women members in the 1,008-member AIA chapter of Chicago. That included associate members who were yet to be licensed. Today there are more than 200.
A brash beginning
In 1971, Gertrude Lempp Kerbis was one of the handful of registered women architects. She already had been named an AIA fellow and brashly decided to launch her own firm.
She had exceptional education and experience, which included a master`s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology (1954) and several major buildings to her credit-the Seven Continents building (O`Hare Airport`s circular restaurant), for C.F. Murphy and Associates, and the Air Force Academy dining hall in Colorado Springs, for Skidmore Owings and Merrill.
Today Kerbis-whose visions include a skyscraper with a 100th floor open-air plaza-develops her own projects. She is working on nine townhouses at 339 Webster St. in Lincoln Park, a $2.5 million effort.
Kerbis` multimillion-dollar townhouse project is at a crucial stage, and she is frustrated. ”I don`t think I`m good at selling units to people,” she says. ”I have a personal feeling about them, and when (customers) hesitate, I get exasperated.” She has decided to hire a management company.
”This is an interesting way to do architecture,” she says, ”being master of the project, that is.” Business is good, but she is nostalgic for the old days.
”I`d love to sit in my office and do beautiful drawings. I`m trying to figure out how to get back to design and give up some of this (development-related) struggle.”
Senior designer was the highest title to be achieved by a woman-Natalie DeBlois, one of Kerbis` colleagues at Skidmore Owings-even though she worked there for almost 30 years.
Those days are gone for good, says Kerbis. ”Now that we have such low unemployment and so many young girls graduating, the firms will have to turn to women. They will have no one else to ask.”
Building a name
By 1983 five percent of AIA`s 42,000 members and 7.7 percent of Chicago`s 1,298 members were women.
”The last 10 years have been wonderful for women architects,” says Cynthia Weese, principal of Weese, Hickey, Weese Architects Ltd. since 1977.
”We are building our own practices and becoming a significant part of the profession.”
Weese, 48, warmly welcomes a visitor to her West Hubbard Street office, which she shares with her partner and husband for 25 years, Benjamin Weese.
Weese is one of several influential women architects in Chicago who built names for themselves in the `80s by forming their own firms. Another, Margaret McCurry of Tigerman McCurry Architects, also is married to her partner. Both work hard at maintaining their own identities.
”I have always thought it was important to separate my work from my husband`s,” says Weese, who worked on her own for 12 years before joining forces with her spouse. ”There`s the danger of the wife being thought of as the office administrator, the critic, but never the designer.”
Likewise, McCurry worked at Skidmore for 11 years and had her own business for four before becoming a partner with husband Stanley Tigerman. They celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary on St. Patrick`s Day.
”A lot of people think I do the interiors of Stanley`s buildings,” says McCurry, 46. ”But on some of our work you`ll notice that my name goes first.”
An example is their award-winning summer home in rural Michigan. Praising her ability to blend interior and exterior architecture, a recent trade article called her ”the Jane Austen of architects. She can create a small world out of a small place, a microcosm in a two-inch piece of ivory.”
At this point in their careers, Weese and McCurry cherish the gains. Weese remembers trying hard to coordinate an exhibit of women`s work in 1977 for Chicago Women in Architecture, a feminist group formed just a few years earlier to promote women in the field. ”We`d call women up and they`d say,
`Oh no, that`s not my design,` ” says Weese. ”They didn`t want to take credit, even though they`d been involved in the process.”
Now women are becoming project managers of important structures and are eager to show their work. ”Women are just beginning to make their mark,” she says.
Carol Ross Barney recalls bravely hanging out her own shingle in 1981. Today Ross Barney & Jankowski Associates at 11 E. Adams St. has more than $1 million in billings. (Architects are paid on an hourly or flat fee, but frequently fees are set as a percentage of construction costs.)
It`s lunch time for Barney, a relatively quiet time. She relaxes with a diet cola and thinks aloud about the day-to-day problems that come with success. Unexpectedly heavy winds had recently blown down the frame of one of her buildings in progress, the Glendale Heights Post Office.
To top it off, she says, the mayor is unhappy about the yellow accent beams on the half-finished structure. ”He called and said he hated it,” she says calmly. ”But wait until it`s done. . . . ”
Juggling roles
Barney has an array of pending projects, from the 13th Street Metra Station rehabilitation in Lockport to the $15 million automated transitway
(”people mover”) stations at O`Hare.
Besides building a business, Barney has three sons-12, 10 and 4-with her husband of 19 years, Alan Barney, a librarian. ”You make do, as any working mother does,” she says matter-of-factly.
An active promoter of women`s rights, Barney is just starting a four-year term as national chair of the AIA women`s committee, founded in 1974 to raise public awareness of women in architecture.
Everybody in the architectural community is talking about rising star Diane Legge, 39, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill`s first woman partner, who has repeatedly taken on the hottest projects, including serving as studio project head of Olympia Center at Superior Street and Michigan Avenue, home of the Neiman Marcus store. And still she has time to dream, such as her vision of a necklace of neighborhood parks linked by the CTA.
Bruce Graham, one of the most influential architects in the city, has been her mentor. The McCormick Place expansion is just one of their many joint projects.
For the moment, Legge is excited about two things: her work on the Arlington Park Race Track reconstruction and her eight-month-old daughter, Alloy (a family name). ”One must enjoy one`s profession, but also make time for a family,” says Legge.
Family and firm
Seeing her at a table in her office at 33 W. Monroe St., it becomes apparent why colleagues talk about her with some awe. Legge strikes a balance between aggressiveness, self-confidence and femininity that`s undoubtedly beneficial in high-level client meetings, where multimillion-dollar building details are hammered out.
She feels she has reached a new level of maturity as an architect. ”I`ve been in the meetings where the client sees the (building) model, doesn`t like it and starts cutting off the top of a building with a luncheon knife,” she says.
Legge, whose educational background includes a bachelor`s degree from Stanford (1972) and a master`s from Princeton (1975), has learned to handle such situations with aplomb. ”I try to clearly state my opinions, reason with people and then convince them we can come to an agreement,” she says.
And when she can`t reach a happy medium? ”Well, I`m not on those projects anymore.”
Legge feels it is vital to ”tend to relationships” with her partners and clients. ”When you have the respect, belief and trust of your colleagues and clients, it`s not necessary to yell and pound the table to be heard.”
She talks about striving even harder to maintain that trust since the birth of her baby. She worked until the day before she went into labor, came into the office part time within three weeks and was back full time within six weeks.
”I want everyone to know that I am here working and that nothing has changed,” she says.
It`s a dilemma faced by other professional women, of course. But in architecture, there is some flexibility.” Architecture is one of the best professions for having a family,” she says. ”Many women take that time to start their own firms.”
Legge says she has no intention of leaving her powerful spot at Skidmore Owings. ”This is threshold time. I`ve done a number of projects on different scales. My own style is emerging.”
Legge describes her work as ”in the modernist tradition but enriched by history.”
Legge is not aspiring to be an architectural star. ”Who cares about being a superstar in the end?” she says. ”I want to be a good architect, work on great projects and do something splendid, elegant and rare.”
