Amelia Verkerk University History, Women's History

Virginia Tech Cheerleading

This post was written by Student Library Assistant, Ella Winterling, sophomore at Virginia Tech studying Multimedia Journalism and Cinema. 

Cheerleading is perhaps one of the most distinctive symbols of school spirit, something that Virginia Tech is not short of. Cheerleading at Virginia Tech has been around for almost a century, and remains a key part of sporting events here at Virginia Tech. They lead the “Let’s Go Hokies” chant, followed by ushering the football players in with the Hokie flags along with “Enter Sandman”. As a part of the spirit squad, they cheer on events like football and basketball games with the responsibility of encouraging the crowd to support the Hokie athletes. 

Lane Stadium housed an exhibit during the 2009 to 2011 football seasons, dedicated to Virginia Tech Cheerleaders and their iconic uniforms. Many uniforms were collected and donated to the exhibit, which was organized by Sherwood “Sherry” Payne Quillen ‘71, a former Virginia Tech cheerleader. Now, the uniforms will now be housed in Special Collections and University Archives. 

In my position as student assistant, I was tasked with creating an inventory for these uniforms, storing them, and creating a resource record, so the materials can be searched for online (Ms 2024-078). The collection includes cheerleading uniforms from 1956 to 2012, with my personal favorite being the 1971 Women’s Uniform complete with hot pants and orange go-go boots. All the uniforms reflect the specific time and culture of when they were created and used.

Cheerleaders at VPI, 1933-1934

Cheerleading has been around at Virginia Tech for a long time, dating back to 1933 or even earlier. However, the team did not become co-ed till the 1955-1956 season. Patsy Steckler Bean was the first female Virginia Tech student to make it onto the team, and three women from Radford College, Bootie Bell Chewning, Merle Funk Perry, and Jeri Hagy Justice, joined the team as well. Their original uniform consisted of a poodle skirt, a Virginia Tech sweater, and black and white oxford shoes, and has since been replicated for a 2006 reunion. 

VPI Cheerleading Team, Bugle 1956

As cheerleading shifted, from leading cheers to a more athletic sport complete with flips and stunts, so did the uniforms. The late 1960s came with a change-up in the appearance of the Virginia Tech cheerleaders. Long pleated skirts, once a staple of the uniform, were traded in for shorter hems and more experimental styles. The 1968-1971 uniform, which was replicated for the 2009-2011 exhibit, includes a short jumper dress and cape, reminiscent of the show Star Trek, according to donor and former Virginia Tech Cheerleader, Sherry Quillen.

The 1970s came with even more changes, from bibbed shorts to neck-ties to hot pants and patent leather boots. Finally, the 80s ushered in the classic mini skirt and crop-top silhouette we associate with cheerleading today. 

Virginia Tech Cheerleaders, Bugle 1973
Hokie cheerleaders at Lane Stadium football game, 1992
Virginia Tech cheerleader, c. 1970s

While the history of cheerleading at Virginia Tech is not completely documented, photos, newspaper clippings, and alums like Sherry give us an idea of some of the spirit and importance of cheerleading at Virginia Tech.

In the 80s, Virginia Tech hosted the Universal Cheerleaders Association summer cheerleading camp multiple times. The training camp furthered skills in cheers, sideline, pyramids, and stunts while giving the cheerleaders daily evaluations. One year, actor and comedian Fred Willard even joined cheerleaders from across the country at the camp, filming for the show Real People that aired on NBC in the early 1980s.

A newspaper article from November 1983 commends the Virginia Tech cheerleaders as a crucial part in keeping the spirit up at Virginia tech games. Citing a 45-0 loss for Virginia Tech, the article highlights how the cheerleaders have to stay spirited. Whether winning or losing, cheerleaders are always there to impress the crowd with a stunt or lead a classic cheer, their job is incredibly important in terms of school spirit.

Other articles feature stories about the cheerleaders’ dedication and hard work. One article from 1981 says that “Cheering is not just getting up and yelling with a powerful voice.” It takes a lot of dedication and up to “12 to 15 hours of work each week”. 

In another article titled, “Cheers: Image May not Change, but Other Things Do,” a Virginia Tech cheerleader speaks about stereotypes for both male and female cheerleaders. She states the impression of male cheerleaders as “an incorrect impression”. She says “college cheerleading is harder and better than it’s ever been”, but that the image won’t change due to the portrayal of cheerleaders in the media. Cheerleading has always been a nuanced sport, not free from stereotypes and incorrect perceptions. However, the hard work and spirit of the sport has always been prevalent, especially at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech cheerleaders, c. early 1980s
Hokie cheerleaders at Lane Stadium football game, 1992
Hokie cheerleader at Lane Stadium football game, 1992

The VT Cheerleading Uniform Collection (Ms 2024-078) highlights how the team was able to adapt and change along with different trends and culture throughout its history. The collection was put together and donated by Virginia Tech Cheerleading alumni, showcasing just how proud and committed the organization is, going beyond their years of college. While the uniforms may have changed, the spirit of the Virginia Tech Cheerleaders has remained the same. 

Resources:

  • RG 31/14/2
  • Photos via Historic Photograph Collection and Virginia Tech Bugles
Jade Snelling International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Women's History

Organizational Politics and the Evolution of the AIA Task Force on Women in the Profession

Created in 1857, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is the primary professional organization for architects in the United States, the stated purpose of which was and is “to unite in fellowship all members of the architectural profession.” Perhaps it goes without saying that at the time it was established it was presumed that all such members would be (white) men. Louise Bethune, the first woman to become a member of the Institute was admitted in 1888, more than thirty years after its founding. The Institute exercises social control over public perception of architecture, professional and hiring standards, and opportunities for its membership.

Nearly a century after Bethune’s admission to the AIA, the organization’s inclusion of women hadn’t progressed much, which was symptomatic of both the institutional culture and the architectural profession writ large. In 1973, a resolution was proposed and adopted at the National AIA Convention in San Francisco that the organization should “take action to integrate women into all aspects of the profession as full participants” and conduct an inquiry into “the status of women in the profession” to be reported on at the 1974 Convention (Edelman 1989, 118). The 1973 resolution was a product of the liberatory rights movements of the 1960s and, consequently, of several years of women becoming increasingly vocal about their second-class status as architects.

As Judith Edelman notes in her essay “Task Force On Women: The AIA Responds to a Growing Presence,” published in the edited volume Architecture: A Place for Women, most women architects in the 1960s and 1970s found professional support outside of the American Institute of Architects. Women had either developed their own informal professional networks or taken the initiative to form their own official local or regional coalitions, associations, or organizations. Ellen Perry Berkeley, editor of the above-mentioned volume and co-creator of the New York-based group Alliance for Women in Architecture (AWA), contributed an influential article to this groundswell of advocacy (Merrett 2018). Berkeley’s piece “Women in Architecture,” appearing in the 1972 issue of Architectural Forum, presented a cogent case for institutional change. Her article begins with the Institute’s refusal to acknowledge that it bears any responsibility for discrimination against women members and, by extension, practitioners:

True or false: The architectural profession, in a kind of ‘gentlemen’s agreement,’ gives its women unequal pay, unequal responsibility, unequal opportunity, unequal recognition, and unequal respect as serious professionals.

False, say the official spokesmen. ‘Some of my best friends are women architects,’ jokes James A. Scheeler, Deputy Executive Vice President of the AIA. More seriously he says, ‘I’ve heard consistently there should be more women in the profession. But I’m not aware of our schools discouraging women: I’d like to see some facts.’ He defines a ‘positive program’ as getting more women ‘into the pipeline,’ and a negative program as raising the subject of discrimination ‘without hard data.’ (Berkeley 1972, 46)

In the article, Berkeley cites what “studies” exist: the AIA’s estimate (according to a survey of its membership conducted in 1971, women comprised roughly 1.2% of its members (233 women in 1969, a number estimated to have grown to between 250 and 300 by 1971)) and refers to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which estimated that women composed around 4% of registered architects in the United States. She gives other comparative statistics (wages, school admissions) based on the best information available at the time, but notes a frustrating lack of reliable or systematic data. She does however systematically dismantle Scheeler’s claim that architecture’s “woman problem” is purely a pipeline problem. Implied, but never explicitly stated, is that his request for concrete “hard data” is an ignorant dismissal masquerading as reasonableness.

The AIA Task Force (first a sub-committee) on Women addressed this data vacuum by undertaking the most comprehensive survey of the status of women in architecture to date. To return to the group’s formation, Judith Edelman writes of her misgivings when she was asked, pursuant to the AIA’s 1973 resolution, to chair a subcommittee of the Personnel Practices Committee: “I was taken aback… that the entire subject was relegated to a minor arm of a committee dealing with many other issues. We had supposed that an independent committee or task force would be the appropriate entity” (Edelman 1989, 119). She accepted the position, however, and began working to survey women across the profession, even as her sub-committee suffered several setbacks, whether from incompetence or intentional obstruction from other AIA members remains uncertain.

The lion’s share of the documentation we hold in the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) on the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Task Force on Women and the Commission’s efforts to “integrate women into the profession and the AIA” from the early-to-mid-1970s can be found among Edelman‘s papers, while a few cross-references exist in other IAWA collections, including Natalie de Blois‘, Marie Laleyan’s, and Jean Linden Young‘s, all of whom were members of the commission (Patricia Schiffelbein and Joan Sprague, whose papers are held at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library, were also members of the commission at various points).

In 1974 Edelman requested a status change to an independent task force and Marie Laleyan became her co-chair. The outcome of their work was an Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) delivered to the AIA Board of Directors in December 1975 that included their original report on the status of women in the profession, and their specific recommendations to address the major inequities laid out in said report. The plan outlined specific goals, actions, and tools; it provided guidance on future representation of women and inclusive language for professional literature; it gave precise details on compliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972) and advised the AIA to create standard guides on “lawful employment practices” to distribute to members upon request; it recommended scholarships and early education interventions to recruit young women into the profession; and it provided benchmark statistics to annually evaluate implementation of the AAP. By all accounts, it was an intentionally actionable document with built-in means for its future assessment and adjustment. As stated in the final plan:

The Affirmative Action concept has been developed over the past ten years as a tool to correct the results of past and present discrimination. Experience has shown, however, that for an affirmative action effort to be effective, it must be directed by a set of specific procedures… [It] is a results-oriented, open-ended plan of action. It requires the analysis of existing conditions, setting of goals and timetables, and development of programs and a set of implementation and record-keeping procedures. (v, AAP/AIA, Edelman, Box 1, Folder 12)

Cover page, The American Institute of Architects, “Affirmative Action Plan for the Integration of Women in the Architectural Profession,” 1975.
Affirmative Action Statement, The American Institute of Architects, “Affirmative Action Plan for the Integration of Women in the Architectural Profession,” 1975.
Request to change committee structure, June 20, 1974. Addressed to Edward Petrazio, AIA.

 

In Edelman’s candid postmortem, she writes, “In spite of the odds against us, we had produced a very thorough document with great potential for accelerating improvement in the status of women architects. And nothing much happened.” (1989, 122) She goes on to reflect that, while the AIA did nothing with the plan, the work went on to have a life beyond its institutional charge. She focuses on the report’s value as the first systematic attempt to measure and analyze the demographic makeup of the profession, the primary causes of unbalanced gender representation, and the endemic and active discriminatory practices (in hiring, promotion, salary, etc.) deployed against licensed women architects.

On the one hand, it’s an old story–institutions being conservative and resistant to change, well-intentioned (but toothless) reports being ignored. But I think Edelman was right–for those who want to carry on the work, the AAP provides a snapshot of the profession at a point in time and it clearly articulates women practitioners’ grievances (as pulled from surveys). Looked at this way, the report’s lack of effect proved its charge correct and underscored the need for institutional change. And in fact it came to embody a feminist critique of intractable organizational politics. A full copy of the report with its appendices and recommendations is available in Special Collections and University Archives or can be found online here. For supporting documentation, please see the Judith Edelman Architectural Papers.

References:

Box 1, Folder 12, Judith Edelman Architectural Papers, Ms1997-010, Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=oai/VT/repositories_2_resources_2044.xml.

Berkeley, Ellen Perry. “Women in Architecture.” The Architectural Forum, vol. 137, no. 2, September 1972. https://usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1972-09.pdf. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.

McQuaid, Matilda, and Ellen Perry Berkeley. Architecture : A Place for Women. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

———-Edelman, Judith. “Task Force On Women: The AIA Responds to a Growing Presence.” Architecture : A Place for Women. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

Merrett, Andrea. “Ellen Perry Berkeley.” Now What?!, Architexx, 24 May 2018. https://www.nowwhat-architexx.org/articles/2018/5/24/ellen-perry-berkeley. Accessed 13 Sept. 2024.

Anthony Wright de Hernandez Diversity, Local/Regional History, Women's History

100 Years of Woman Suffrage

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

U.S. Senate website, Art & History, Timeline: The Senate and the 19th Amendment

Introduced on January 10, 1878 by California Republican Senator Aaron Sargent, the “Susan B. Anthony Amendment” took 42 years to be passed and ratified by the requisite states to become a part of the United States Constitution. Over the course of those 42 years, women organized to advocate for their rights, sending petitions, protesting, and lobbying lawmakers in Washington. In response, women were condescended to, reviled, vilified, and assaulted by opponents to woman suffrage.

The woman suffrage amendment was defeated in the Senate four times, in 1887, 1914, 1918, and June of 1919. The amendment passed the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919 and finally passed in the Senate on June 4, 1920. It was quickly ratified by the required three-fourths of states when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 26, 1920, granting women nationwide the right to vote. Their first opportunity to exercise that right happening just two months and seven days later in the 1920 election.

Last fall, I was asked to put together an exhibit commemorating the 19th Amendment to be displayed sometime in 2020. Generally, our exhibits highlight materials in one of our main collecting areas. National politics is not one of those collecting areas. Still, with a little searching of our catalog and finding aids, I was able to identify some unique and interesting items related to the fight for woman suffrage and the passage of the 19th Amendment.

If you happen to be in Newman Library before the end of the year, you can check out the Votes for Women exhibit in the Special Collections and University Archives windows on the first floor. For those who won’t be stopping by the library, some letters from suffragists included in our collections are highlighted here.

First are two letters from Adelaide Avery Claflin (July 28, 1846 – May 31, 1931) to Mrs. Hollander discussing an upcoming speaking engagement for the woman suffrage association. These are from the Adelaide A. Claflin Letters (Ms1992-005). Claflin was a resident of Quincy, Massachusetts and began speaking publicly in support of woman suffrage in 1883. She became a member of the Qunicy school committee in 1884 and was the first known woman to hold elected office in the town. For more about Claflin and the suffrage movement in Qunicy, check out Remember the Ladies: Woman’s Suffrage and the Black Holes of Local History on the Quincy History Blog.

Page one of a handwritten letter from Adelaide Claflin to Mrs. Hollander regarding a speaking engagement with the woman suffrage association in November 1884.
Claflin Letter, November 11, 1884, page 1
Pages two and three of a handwritten letter from Adelaide Claflin to Mrs. Hollander regarding a speaking engagement with the woman suffrage association in November 1884.
Claflin Letter, November 11, 1884, pages 2-3

The first letter reads:

Tues. Nov. 11 1884,
Mrs. Hollander,
Dear madam,

I have received a note from Mrs. Stone, (giving me your name simply as above,) and asking me to communicate with you in case I were willing to speak for you in Somerville on Sunday, the 22d and on the same subject on which I lately spoke in South Boston. As the 22nd is Saturday, I am left in a little doubt as to the real date desired, and I am also a little embarrassed in my writing by some other causes. I have a bad cold just now, but probably would be well enough to speak by that time, and would like to do so, as far as I know at present. But I did not speak, exactly, at So. Boston, I read a written essay upon “What women as a class owe to each other”, and this essay, substantially, was read to the Somerville Woman’s Club a year ago. I do not know whether that club is in the same part of Somerville, or whether that would be any objection. I should, therefore be glad to hear further from you in regard to the circumstances, as Mrs. Stone’s note was extremely brief.

Very truly yours,
Adelaide A. Claflin
21 Chestnut St.
Quincy
Maſ.

Page one of a handwritten letter from Adelaide Claflin to Mrs. Hollander regarding a speaking engagement with the woman suffrage association in November 1884.
Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 1
Pages two and three of a handwritten letter from Adelaide Claflin to Mrs. Hollander regarding a speaking engagement with the woman suffrage association in November 1884.
Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 2-3
Page four of a handwritten letter from Adelaide Claflin to Mrs. Hollander regarding a speaking engagement with the woman suffrage association in November 1884.
Claflin Letter, November 14, 1884, page 4

The second letter reads:

Friday, Nov. 14, 1884,
My dear Mrs. Hollander,

I am much obliged for your explanation in regard to the lectures and I am glad such a course is undertaken. With regard to myself, I only mentioned the So. Boston paper, because Mrs. Stone wrote to me about that. I have spoken for the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, upon that question, a good many times within the past two years, and feel that I can always say something upon most aspects of the woman suffrage question. Mrs. Stone has often asked me to speak upon municipal suffrage because she liked my presentation of that subject – but some of the Somerville friends have very likely heard me speak upon it in Boston, and I would rather prefer myself to speak in a more general way. I have had some experience in regards to schools, having been teacher, mother, and school committee, and had some special advantages here in Quincy where educational matters have been much discussed, and I have been in the thick of it. How would you like as subject “The need of the feminine influence in the school, the town, and the state”? Or if that is too large – the first two leaving out the “state”? I think I could make some useful points in an address of that kind. But if there is any special branch of the suffrage, or woman question, which would be more desirable to you as a step in the unfolding of your scheme of lectures I think it would be safe enough for your President to announce it for me for the 23rd. I have studied the woman question all my life, and while I do not profess to have solved as great a problem, I feel pretty sure I can talk about most parts of it in a tolerably rational manner. I write thus because there is not time before Sunday for me to hear from you and write again as to subject, and I should like to meet the wishes of the committee in that respect. I should be glad to know how long an address is desired and whether it is to be in a parlor or a church, etc.

Very truly yours
Adelaide A. Claflin,
21 Chestnut St.,
Qunicy

As an alternative subject I might suggest “The reaction of equal rights upon woman and society.”
A.A.C.

Next is a letter from Lila M. Valentine to J. D. Eggleston, president of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, from the Records of the Office of the President, Joseph Dupuy Eggleston (Record Group 2/7). Lila Meade Valentine was co-founder of the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia and served as its first president. Learn more about her at Encyclopedia Virginia.

Page one of a 1915 letter from Lila Meade Valentine to J. D. Eggleston. The letter is on Equal Suffrage League of Virginia stationery.
Lila Meade Valentine letter, April 2, 1919, page 1
Page two of a 1915 letter from Lila Meade Valentine to J. D. Eggleston. The letter is on Equal Suffrage League of Virginia stationery.
Lila Meade Valentine letter, April 2, 1919, page 2

The letter from Valentine reads:

Dr. J. D. Eggleston. April 2, 1915
Blacksburg, Va.

My dear [cousin?].

Can you arrange for me to speak any one of the following days, April 21, 22, 23, 24, 26? I am to help in the Pennsylvania campaign in ?? City April 28. I should greatly appreciate a prompt reply as I have several other invitations to fill in, and only wait your decision to readjust them because of your May 1st limit.

Cordially yours
Lila M Valentine

P.S.
I regret very much that you felt compelled to resign from our State Board of Education. We can ill afford to do without your valuable aid. L.M.V.

Finally, a letter from Eulalie Salley to Mrs. Francis Bear of Roanoke, Virginia, from the Eulalie Salley Letter (Ms2013-079). Salley was born in Augusta, Georgia in 1883 and lived on her grandparents’ plantation in Louisville, Georgia before moving to Aiken, South Carolina in 1892. Her education included a year each at Mary Baldwin College in Virginia and Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Around 1912, Salley organized the Aiken County Equal Suffrage League and served as its first president. She campaigned for suffrage by door-to-door canvassing, hosting fundraisers, and even dropping leaflets from an airplane. The end of this letter mentions her efforts to elect Gilbert McMillan to office in South Carolina and his role in South Carolina finally ratifying the 19th Amendment in 1969, 50 years after it became part of the U.S. Constitution. Learn more about Eulalie Salley in the South Carolina Encyclopedia.

Page one of a 1974 letter from Eulalie Salley to Mrs. Francis Bear.
Eulalie Salley letter, January 12, 1974, page 1
Page two of a 1974 letter from Eulalie Salley to Mrs. Francis Bear.
Eulalie Salley letter, January 12, 1974, page 2

The Eulalie Salley letter reads:

Eulalie Salley, Realtor
Post Office Box 622
111 Park Avenue, S. W.
Aiken, South Carolina 29801

January 12, 1974

Mrs. Francis Bear,
“Bearcliff” 100 Etheridge Road,
Roanoke, Virginia 24018

Dear Frances.
I’m not at all surprised that your Mother did not tell you about my interest in politics. She and I are always so busy talking about members of the family that there is no time for anything else during her fleeting visits. In fact, most of our time is taken up with talk about that beautiful boy of yours.

I am so glad to know of your interest in politics. I’m wondering if you have joined the League of Women Voters or any other Woman’s organization in Roanoke. If not, you should, fo you would find it fasinating. I don’t see why you don’t begin right now to run for some public office—maybe by starting off with City Council or the State Legislature.

Here in Aiken we have a woman County Commissioner and a woman member of the South Carolina Lefislature. I campained for both of them, along with my faithful Gilbert McMillan. (Gilbert is a distant cousin of Louises’ husband, Raiford). He is the one who got the South Carolina legislature to ratify the Nineteenth amendment, a bill women had been working on for fifty years with no success.

Gilbert was a new commer and we decided we needed some one fresh in the Senate so 300 women got out and campained and elected him. It was very exciting.

It took me a long time to find out that if you wanted a law passed, you had better get your own man and get him to go to Columbia and pass it for you.

I hope Jody will do well in his school and I know you are going to be proud of him.

Affectionately,
Eula

In addition to these materials, the Special Collections and University Archives exhibit also includes articles about women’s voting from the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1920, items from the New York Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, and some suffrage cookbooks. If you get a chance to stop by the library while the exhibit is up, check it out to see everything on display. If you don’t make it in before 2021, the items are always available to view upon request.

Jade Snelling Architecture, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Women's History

Nature and Geometry: River Run and Beverly Willis’s Classicism With a Twist

As part of an ongoing effort to digitize records representing Beverly Willis’s significant works and projects, I’ve been highlighting some of her work in posts here. In November 2019 I wrote a post about her firm’s work in developing a program called “CARLA” or Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis and its use in a land development project (Pacific Point Condominiums). This week I’ll be looking at a smaller scale, but no less stunning, project: the River Run Residence. The house itself is beautiful, but I wanted to examine how it embodies Willis’s approach to design. When looking at a final product (a building facade, polished interiors) it can be easy to forget just how many choices went into creating something cohesive. Yet looking at design records can tease out some of the labor and give perspective on the process of designing and building that’s often obscured or mystified in the way we talk about and look at architecture. While this post won’t go deeply into the design process, it will touch on a few of the generative ideas and organizing principles behind the final building.

Section, River Run Residence, 1983. From the Beverly Willis Architectural Collection, Ms1992-019, Special Collections, University Libraries, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

The axis of Beverly Willis’s design philosophy hews to that line between formal and informal: the formal geometries of classicism and the informal rusticity of regionalism. Willis believes that at its core, design is about the investigation of the symbolic content of forms/shapes, and the manipulation of images (for more on this, see Invisible Images). When thinking about design, it can be a long and iterative process of drafting, layering, modeling – leaving aside sourcing materials and overseeing construction – this amounts to creating and blending images to form novel yet coherent aesthetics.

The Willis-designed Palladian villa cum rustic ranch in Napa Valley, called River Run, is emblematic of this mode of design thinking. The balance of the colonnaded portico, dramatic windows, grand approach mixed with the redwood shingle siding – classicism inflected by the vernacular – are all the more impressive given River Run’s relaxed atmosphere as a retreat. This is an interesting example of how works are often colored by different influences that are channeled through a designer. “While she abided by general principles of symmetry and proportion, the local shingle style — with its spreading roof, plentiful windows, and use of natural colors and regional materials — was also a powerful influence” (58-59). Willis seems to view it as a process of simplification – synthesis and streamlining. “Although the house is quite large, it displays a consistent economy of lines and means. It draws from the vocabulary of classicism, but there’s nothing complicated about it” (Willis qtd in Nelson 60). The nature and geometry mentioned in the title – and, indeed, Willis’s philosophy in general – refer to some of the central tenets of classicism and classical philosophy – that there are natural ideals that humans gravitate toward, that shapes and forms reveal a hidden geometry.

Further reading

  • Nelson, Christina. “Modern Retreats.” Home. 1986: 58-61.
  • Nelson, Christina. “Powder Room Poise.” Home. August 1986: 70-74.
  • Willis, Beverly. Invisible Images: The Silent Language of Architecture. National Building Museum, 1997.
Jade Snelling Architecture, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Women's History

Introducing CARLA: Pioneering Technology in Urban Planning

The Beverly Willis Architectural Collection, open for research at Special Collections and University Archives, holds many treasures: sumptuous drawings, correspondence, and photographic materials documenting the work of one of America’s great twentieth century designers. One such project we’ll be highlighting here shows Willis and Associates, Inc.’s, (WAI’s) work on an early land analysis program called CARLA. CARLA, or Computerized Approach to Residential Land Analysis, was a program developed by the firm in the 1970s that was on the vanguard of employing computing applications in site development.

The programs aim was to reduce construction costs by instrumentalizing and automating much of the initial planning process and environmental impact research. To this end, the firm enlisted the skills of a young urban design grad student, Jochen Eigen, to study and model the architectural planning process. His work aggregated and analyzed data on the proposed project’s user needs and the site’s zoning and topography (via a client-submitted map), which was then correlated with an internally developed database that contained information on thousands of residential sites and floor layouts – planners would iterate through the process repeatedly to determine ideal land allocations for building.

CARLA001

At the time of CARLA’s advent, land analysis was a fairly lengthy ordeal. It would take companies 4-6 months using traditional methods before they would be able to properly estimate financial cost and environmental impact. Implementing and using this new tool reduced that timeline to about three weeks. The process would result in a site perspective, analysis of soil and natural drainage patterns, areas of a plot suitable for development and areas in need of cut and fill. The program allowed easy comparison of design solutions and their respective costs.

While CARLA was specifically geared toward site analysis, it is still ancestrally linked to modern computer aided design programs. Its primary function was to optimize land use by determining the best planning unit, its placement on a parcel, the cost of doing cut and fills, etc., and these are all necessary design considerations that are layered into modern CAD/BIM software (the BIM stands for Building Information Modeling). The program turned a time-consuming, bespoke research process into something comparatively data-driven and efficient, enabling Willis’s firm to maintain its competitive edge during the recession of the 1970s. At the time of its implementation, its aim was to get more contracts for lucrative housing developments, while it also addressed another fundamental need, namely, environmental considerations in urban design.

The first such development WAI used the software for were condominiums commissioned by the Alpha Land Company, to be located on a sloping 9-acre beachfront property. In her book Invisible Images, Willis writes about the beginning of her work on the Pacific Point Condominiums, and the inadequacy of available tools for assessing cost and estimating damage to existing ecosystems. Early iterations of mapping and topographical analysis programs were created by the government during World War II and later adapted for use by oil companies for industrial use; by 1971, the Kansas Geological Survey department at the University of Kansas had developed a mapping and contour program called SURFACE II. This program would form the backbone of Eigen’s/WAI’s land analysis software. Willis recalls,

With these tools I carefully planned stepped terraces on the bluff side of the site downward toward the ocean and designed a bridgelike entry to the three-story building’s mid-section. My design used diagonally placed interior walls that slice through the apartment facades, elongating one side like a fan. These subtle diagonal wall planes direct the eye to a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean.

PacPt_reduced

PacPt001
Top: presentation drawing for Pacific Point Condominiums; bottom: photograph of development, found in Invisible Images

The history of CARLA’s development is further documented here. Some of the firm’s internal documentation of the software’s development is available in the Beverly Willis Architectural Collection and will soon be digitized and made available online as part of the library’s new digital platform.

Anthony Wright de Hernandez Diversity, LGBTQ History, Local/Regional History, University History, Women's History

Denim Day: A Triumphant Return

My job here at Virginia Tech is Community Collections Archivist & Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator for the University Libraries. I forgive you if you got lost in all that. Essentially, the part of my job that is archival in nature is to engage with traditionally marginalized communities around their histories. I help them preserve and make available documentary evidence of their existence so that history will better reflect the full human experience. This post is about a project that fell squarely within that scope – and helped me really see what doing this work can mean.

Nancy Kelly smiling
Nancy Kelly, “The Instigator”

About a year ago, I got a request for a meeting with Nancy Kelly, a lesbian alumna who wanted the university to acknowledge the early history of the Gay Rights Movement at Virginia Tech. At the time, I assumed this would be a fairly standard discussion with a potential donor about materials they had and whether Special Collections would be interested in adding them to our collections. I was wrong. Nancy, certainly had some wonderful documents and we talked about the donation process. But, Nancy had a vision. She wanted us to document her experience as a lesbian at Tech during the birth of the publicly visible LGBTQ+ community here. And, she wanted it done on video. And, she wanted us to document the experiences of all of her friends and fellow alumni from that same time period. And she wanted the university as a whole to celebrate the events of 40 years ago and publicly display support for the LGBTQ+ community here. This seemed an impossible dream at the time.

Having some familiarity with the events of January 1979 from the coverage in the Collegiate Times, I wasn’t about to say no. It’s a fascinating exploration of late-1970s attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. At the time, I had no idea how I would make a video oral history project a reality. I had no personal experience as an oral history interviewer. I also knew we had limited storage space and that video files are huge! Still, this was a project with potential, so I said yes. No conditions. No mentioning all the potential issues. I just said yes. Luckily, the university made Kaltura available institution-wide for video hosting about the time I needed to put the interviews online.

What happened over the next year was a mixture of serendipity and perseverance. Working with Jessica Taylor, Assistant Professor of Oral and Public History, and Luis Garay Director of the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, we held an oral history workshop in late November specifically targeted to the LGBTQ+ community and preservation of its history.

Oral History Workshop banner ad

At that workshop, I found out that Joe Forte, Shelving Supervisor with the University Libraries (and an amazing DJ for Stacks on Stacks, the University Libraries Radio Show), and Slade Lellock, PhD candidate in Sociology, were very interested in recording some interviews. I also met Adri Ridings, a student who was similarly interested in helping to document LGBTQ+ history.

From there, we began recording interviews with alumni who hadn’t engaged with the university in 40 years. It was emotional. It was cathartic. It was a labor of love for everyone involved. Nancy did the work to engage them and tell them we could be trusted. Without her, there would be no interviews because these alumni had no reason to trust someone from Virginia Tech to care about their experiences and sharing them honestly.

While I worked with the alumni to preserve their stories, Luis Garay, from the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, Latanya Walker, Director of Alumni Relations for Diversity and Inclusion, Mark Weber, from the Ex Lapide Alumni Society, students from Hokie Pride, the LGBT Faculty and Staff Caucus, and more were all working on putting together an amazing schedule of events for a 40th anniversary commemoration of Denim Day combined with Pride Week and Queer in Appalachia, an annual event celebrating what it is to be queer here in appalachia.

Pride Week 2019 calendar

Meanwhile, we were busily recording and transcribing as fast as possible to get as many interviews online as we could before Pride Week and the planned #VTDenimDayDoOver. I worked with our media folks to create a cool promo/intro video (linked below – click on the picture) for the collection.

Screenshot of a video player showing the starting shot from the Denim Day 2019 promo/intro video.

As the Denim Day events grew near and we had recorded almost all the scheduled interviews with the alumni from 40 years before, I worked with Susanna Rinehart, Chair of Theatre and Cinema in the School of Performing Arts on content for Jeans Noticeably Absent: The Story of Denim Day 1979 which combined theatre students reading newspaper articles and letters reacting to Denim Day with clips from the oral histories.

Overall, this experience has been amazing and triumphant. We gathered great oral histories and engaged the community. Nancy and her fellow alumni were celebrated by the university that had once ostracized them and called them an embarrassment. We were in the VT News, and the Roanoke Times. We were on the home page of the university – for 2 days running so far!!!! (see picture below)

Screenshot of the vt.edu homepage featuring the VT News article.

We had the main university Twitter account tweeting about us.

Screenshot of Tweet featuring a short video of the VT Denim Day Do Over event.

We had departments from across the university sending out messages of support even though they couldn’t attend our coordinated commemoration photo.

Screenshot of a tweet from the VT Department of Dairy Science.
Screenshot of a tweet from VT Rec Sports.

We also got more members of the community to sit down and record their own stories for our collection.

There’s still a ton of work to do to process the material we’ve gathered related to these efforts. There’s also a ton of work needed to engage the parts of the community not represented by the story of Denim Day: those members who aren’t white, cisgender, gay, or lesbian. Hopefully, the work we’ve done here will be a step toward showing that we care enough to do this work honestly and with respect.

To see the collection we built about Denim Day (in progress) and our broader documentation of LGBTQ+ history at Virginia Tech visit here and here.

vtspecblogger Architecture, Architecture, History, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Uncategorized, Women's History

Trajectories of an Architects Design Sensibilities: From Student to Practitioner

Model of architectural design project.
AustellungsbauVariabelTransportabel, Architectural model, 1962

The beginning of the fall semester and the nearly overnight return to a bustling and lively campus provides a good opportunity to reflect on the essential thing that we do, which is to educate. Student works are common discoveries in the collections that form the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA) and can tell us either about an architects own practice or their methods of classroom instruction. This post will focus on the former, with an eye to the role that archival collections can play in examining design sensibilities within the context of a developing architectural practice.

Drawing showing elevation and site plan sketches.
Concept drawing, Bahamas Nursing School, c. 1985.

One of the most profound ways to understand the progression of the aesthetic sensibilities of a creative professional is to examine their works (including inspirational materials, writing, and sketches) across their career. Looking at materials that span yearsor even decadesoffers a glimpse into how their style evolved, was refined, stayed constant, or in some cases shifted radically. With architects it is possible to trace the development not only of their design considerations, but also the changes in drawing techniques, enhanced observational skills, and a deeper understanding of spaces. It is often possible to see how they refine and expand their understanding of the outer world, visual culture, and the impact of spaces on the people who inhabit them.

Photograph of architectural model.
AustellungsbauVariabelTransportabel, Architectural model, 1962

The Exhibition HallVariableTransportable project was completed by Dorothee Stelzer King while she was an architecture student at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Berlin, Germany. Completed the same year that she received her degree, the project was based on a first-year design exercise involving the enlargement of a simple shape to create a complex design without adding extra material to the final structure.

Document outlining requirements and development of the project.
Description and requirements of the award-winning portable exhibition hall project.

 

Drawing showing interlocking shapes.
Concept drawing showing how a basic triangle is repeated and extended to create interlocking stars and circular forms that in turn interlock to create flexible, modular shapes.

 

Elevations, site plans, and details.
Elevations, site plans, and detail drawings for AustellungsbauVariabelTransportabel.

Ms2013-023, Dorothee Stelzer King, Folder 3Ms2013-023, Dorothee Stelzer King, Folder 3

The Dorothee Stelzer King collection also contains works that the architect completed at various points during her professional career, allowing researchers to study the progression of her designs over time. The series of concept drawings and plans for the Bahamas Nursing School in Nassau, Bahamas, shows Kings attention to understanding how educational spaces and their inhabitants interact. While the drawings show a move away from the more experimental design work seen in Exhibition HallVariableTransportable, they showcase a greater understanding of the practical nature of educational facilities and the importance of proper acoustics, seating, structural elements, and paths of movement through interior spaces.

Concept sketch for the Bahamas Nursing School, c. 1985

 

Site plan drawing.
Location plan, Bahamas Nursing School, April 16, 1985.

 

Construction photos.
Construction photographs showing exterior and interior spaces, including structural elements, of the Bahamas Nursing School project.

Ms2013_023_B001_F020toF024_002_BahamasNursing_Scrap_120Ms2013_023_B001_F020toF024_002_BahamasNursing_Scrap_118

Many other student and professional design projects and records can be accessed in the Special Collections Reading Room at Virginia Tech. The finding aid for the Dorothee Stelzer King Architectural Collection can be viewed online at Virginia Heritage. The collection is currently being digitized with funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and will be available in full through the Virginia Tech digital library.

Jade Snelling Architecture, History, Diversity, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Women's History

History Is Not a Meritocracy: A Deep Dive Into Confronting Gaps on Wikipedia

In honor of next week’s Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

History is not a simple meritocracy.[1] So goes the opening salvo of Despina Stratigakos Unforgetting Women Architects, an essay on writing women practitioners back into the historical record. Weve touched on this topic in previous blog posts about the history of women in architecture and the importance of making their work visible, especially online. Yet in advance of the Women in Architecture and the Arts Wikipedia edit-a-thon next Wednesday March 28th, it seemed an opportune time to take another look at the troubling lack of female representation on Wikipedia and within the architectural profession.

When we talk about representation of women on Wikipedia, we actually talk about two distinct, yet intimately connected, issues. One issue is a gender asymmetry in the sites content, the other is an asymmetry in the sites contributors.[2][3][4] Myriad and complex factors contribute to both. Wikipedias structure and ideology, the fact that many of its veteran editors are white and male, the perceived lack of importance and cultural relevance of issues significant to women implicit in Wikipedias criteria for notability,[5] sometimes ruthlessly enforced by the sites self-appointed gatekeepers; these and other factors[6] cause significant lacunae and stark attrition among female editors (who account for 13% of contributors)[7][8] in an encyclopedia that purports to be the sum of all human knowledge.

In fact, some quick research demonstrates the widened scope of notability criteria where men and mens interests are concerned. As a much-circulated New York Times article from 2011 points out[9], and indeed accounts from (sometimes expert) women contributors writing about women[10], there can be a lot of pushback on articles addressing womens interests: nitpicking about sourcing and whether an articles subject is notable enough to warrant inclusion on the site; indeed, articles on women are often flagged as not even adhering to Wikipedias neutrality guidelines. Yet there are lengthy articles and sub-articles about video games, video game characters, male-dominated television shows, and, of course, biographical articles on men in many fields that are often published without challenge.[11] To this point, a research article addressing gender bias in Wikipedias content has found that women on Wikipedia are, on the whole, more notable than their male counterparts, indicating that one must reach a higher threshold of accomplishment as a woman in order to be deemed important enough to merit an article – a threshold that the article characterizes as the glass ceiling effect.[12] Also of note, the article presents evidence that certain topics are overstated in womens biographies and tend to receive more attention than their work, i.e., their personal relationships and family status.[13]

Wikipedia culture is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a microcosm of culture writ large and its participatory homogeneity mirrors that of other kinds of open online forums that depend on user-generated content. The way the site reproduces bias, however, may be exacerbated by its claim to neutrality that is meant to bolster its reliability and credibility. This principle, when coupled with a lack of diversity in its user base, is problematic in that neutrality then comes to be synonymous with a white male point of view. This likely explains much of the resistance and flags that women encounter when they attempt to publish pages about other women.[14] They claim that women should write their gender out of their entries;[15] this may very well be because male editors have become accustomed to perceiving their own form of gendered analysis as the default – it is not, however, neutral.

Many scholars and practitioners (Susana Torre, Denise Scott Brown, Ellen Perry Berkeley, Dolores Hayden, Despina Stratigakos, Lori Brown, and Gabrielle Esperdy, to name but a few) have worked to challenge and dismantle pernicious myths about the architectural profession.[16] Institutions like the International Archive of Women in Architecture and the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation have made the collection of women architects papers a top priority and have helped to recover a cultural past and properly historicize the conditions of womens professional exclusion.[17] Additionally, in recent years scholars, information specialists, and architects have worked to ensure greater representation in online environments – enhancing discoverability of otherwise underappreciated or forgotten historical figures.[18][19][20] Unfortunately there isnt space here to fully unpack all of these womens various contributions to the field and its literature. Please join us next Wednesday in the Multipurpose Room at Newman Library to engage with their analysis more fully and to rewrite digital history! RSVP for the Women in Architecture Edit-a-thon here.

References

1. Despina Stratigakos, Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia, Places Journal, April 2016. Accessed 21 Mar 2018. https://doi.org/10.22269/130603

2. Cohen, Noam. Define Gender Gap? Look Up Wikipedias Contributor List. The New York Times, 30 January 2011. Accessed 21 March 2018.

3. Gardner, Sue. Nine Reasons Women Dont Edit Wikipedia (In Their Own Words), Sue Gardners Blog, 19 February 2011. Accessed 21 Mar 2018.

4. Wagner, Claudia, et al. “Women through the Glass Ceiling: Gender Asymmetries in Wikipedia.” EPJ Data Science, vol. 5, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-24.

5. Davidge, Tania. “How to be ‘notable.'”Parlour: Women, Equity, Architecture website, 24 April 2015. Accessed 22 March 2018.

6. Gardner, 2011.

7. Cohen, 2011.

8. Bear, Julia B., and Benjamin Collier. “Where are the Women in Wikipedia? Understanding the Different Psychological Experiences of Men and Women in Wikipedia.” Sex Roles, vol. 74, no. 5, 2016, pp. 254-265.

9. Cohen, 2011.

10. Vigor, Emily. Down the Rabbit Hole: (Miss)adventures in Wikipedia. Environmental Design blog, UC Berkeley, 3 April 2015. Accessed 21 March 2018.

11. Ibid.

12. Wagner et al., 2016.

13. Ibid.

14. Vigor, 2015.

15. Gardner, 2011.

16. Torre, Susana, 1944, and Architectural League of New York. Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective : A Publication and Exhibition Organized by the Architectural League of New York through its Archive of Women in Architecture. Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1977. Scott Brown, Denise. Having words. Vol. 4;4.;. London: Architectural Association, 2009. Berkeley, Ellen P., and Matilda McQuaid. Architecture: A Place for Women. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington [D.C.], 1989. Hayden, Dolores. “What would a Non-Sexist City be Like? Speculations on Housing, Urban Design, and Human Work.” Signs, vol. 5, no. 3, 1980, pp. S170-S187. Stratigakos, Despina. Where are the Women Architects?. Princeton University Press, in association with Places Journal, Princeton, 2016. Brown, Lori A. Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture. Ashgate, Burlington, VT; Farnham, Surrey, 2011. Esperdy, Gabrielle. The Incredible True Adventures of the Architectress in America, Places Journal, September 2012. Accessed 22 Mar 2018. https://doi.org/10.22269/120910

17. Torre, 1977.

18. Moritz, Cyndi. Project Aims to Raise Profile of Women Architects on Wikipedia. Syracuse University News, 1 June 2015. Accessed 21 March 2018.

19. “The Year Five Campaign.” Art + Feminism. Accessed 22 March 2018.

20. “Welcome to Parlour.” Archiparlour. Accessed 22 March 2018.

Anthony Wright de Hernandez Diversity, The 1960s, Women's History

The History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement

Have you ever thought about the history of LGBTQ rights in the United States? Did you learn about historic figures and events in the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement in elementary school? middle school? high school? college? Did you ever learn about these important figures and events in US History? For the majority of people, the answers will be “no”. It’s a sad reality that this topic isn’t covered in most schools and that most students will not be exposed to this history unless they choose a course of study in college that requires a course about LGBTQ people.

As part of our efforts to collect and highlight archival material about the LGBTQ+ community, our partnership with the LGBTQ+ Resource Center at Virginia Tech, and in support of LGBTQ+ History Month (October), we arranged to host an exhibit from the ONE Archives Foundation highlighting archival material from the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries. The exhibit is titled The History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement.

Photograph of a directional sign reading "The History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement exhibit begins here"
The start of the “The History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement” exhibit on display at Virginia Tech. The exhibit is on display from right to left due to the normal traffic patterns in this part of the library, so a sign noting the start of the exhibit is helpful.

The exhibit consists of 39 panels that are 24 x 36 inches. We had them printed on adhesive vinyl and put them up in the hallway outside the library’s new digital humanities classroom. The exhibit includes information on early “gayborhoods” in the 1940s, the Lavender Scare during 1950s McCarthyism, the Stonewall Riots in the 1960s, the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the push for marriage equality in the 1990s and 2000s, and more.

We first posted the exhibit during LGBTQ+ History Month and invited attendees at our LGBTQ+ History at Virginia Tech archival exhibit to take a look after viewing documents from local LGBTQ+ history. Since then, many people have stopped to read through the exhibit panels.

In November, Aline Souza, a graduate student in Creative Technologies and Architecture, took some time to look through the exhibit. After reading through the panels, she said “I like the exhibit because it gives me a chance of a transformative experience on my way to class. I find it unique because it combines good graphics and colors with information about things that happened that I’d never know about.”

The History of the LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement exhibit was put up on on October 16, 2017 and will be on display through December 21, 2017 on the first floor of Newman Library (from the cafe, head up the ramp and turn right at the bathrooms). If you’re on campus, take a moment to stop by Newman Library and take a look.

Jade Snelling Architecture, International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA), Women's History

Building the Builders: Egalitarian Pedagogy and Sustainable Design

When taking part in Frank Lloyd Wrights preeminent architectural school known as the Taliesin Fellowship, Lois Gottlieb came to understand architecture as a kind of Lebensphilosophie, in that she came to consider it a mode of living that touched on and derived inspiration from all aspects of life. Hence the title of her account of her apprenticeship A Way of Life, which deftly highlights the interplay of the rarefied and the mundane, the interdependence of humans and their natural surroundings, and the fluidity between the concreteness of day-to-day living and abstract worldview. Furthermore, it presents art as an act of cultivation and sustained effort, rather than a quasi-mysterious realization of personal genius.Gottlieb005

It’s of note that Wrights teaching style deviated significantly from the norms of his time and tended to subvert the traditional master-apprentice relationship. His radically egalitarian approach to pedagogy came to inform Gottliebs own teaching style and her outlook on the ways humans shape and control the environment. Her first major publication, the book Environment and Design in Housing, first workshopped as a series of lectures at UC – Riverside, articulates the effects of design on both the micro- and macro-scale, i.e., the way the [physical] environment we each create for ourselves and our families does affect every part of our lives [1] and the implications of poor design in terms of ecological sustainability and financial cost. In her view, humans have an unrivaled capacity to adapt the environment to their needs – a capacity that is problematic at scale and exacts high tolls, both from the land itself and from people affected by landslides or other natural disasters (see picture below). In light of these concerns, she advocates a more thoughtful approach based on client needs and leveraging the natural assets of building sites rather than the one-size-fits-all attitude of traditional design. (As a side note, Julius Shulman, famed architectural photographer, worked with Gottlieb on this book as photography consultant. The work itself features many of his gorgeous black-and-white photographs, prints of which are available for viewing as part of Gottliebs architectural collection here at Virginia Tech. Two copies of Environment and Design in Housing are also available for research as part of Special Collections selection of rare books – the captions and broader expositions provide invaluable context for the photographs.)

Gottlieb008
Gottlieb’s caption: “The result! The gadgets in the kitchen no longer matter.”[2][3] Photographer: Julius Shulman.
 

Design and Gender Norms

A notable feature of this book is its emphasis on practice and its demystification of architectural knowledge. While much of Gottlieb’s approach is informed by cultivating self-knowledge and considering the dwelling as a vehicle for personal expression, it tends to balance this view with injunctions to draw on the specialized knowledge of experts – lending itself to a kind of tempered humanism and recognition of personal limitations. This methodology, I think, can also be traced to Gottliebs time spent at Taliesin, which, for the time, was certainly unique in its combination of self-reliance and communal dependencies.

A different, but related, novelty of the schools social structure was its disregard for gender norms. It is generally recognized these days that, historically, there have been gender-inflected labor divisions in both the public and domestic sphere. At Taliesin, these traditional divisions were not enforced – men would often perform tasks like preparing dinner while women would thresh wheat. Homemaking was not the strictly circumscribed domain of women, nor was outdoor labor the exclusive domain of men. While her works primary focus isnt on cultural assumptions regarding women, Gottlieb clearly has thoughts on the connections between gender and under-recognized labor. On the subject of domesticity, design, and value, she offers the following observations:

Another attitude toward the occupation of homemaking is that it is nothing or of little importance. An answer to the typical question What does Jane Doe do? is Oh, nothing, or She doesnt work, she is just a housewife. Yet this housewife is supposed to do most of the buying for the family, keep them all in good physical condition, keep them attractively housed and clothed, see to it that the children are educated, and so on and on.

In other situations any of these tasks is considered a field of specialized knowledge…But the homemaker is supposed to have absorbed and be all these things at once, a sort of twentieth-century version of the Renaissance man (without any of the credit for doing so, presumably).[4]

 

It’s clear that Environment and Design in Housing is at least partially intended to serve as a practical resource for homemakers. It’s also clear that the book is meant to bring analysis to typically underserved segments of society and to address real (if hidden) needs.

Gottlieb010
Gottlieb-designed home – a great example of California Mid-Century Modern architecture. Photographer: Morley Baer.

References

1. Lois Davidson Gottlieb, Environment and Design in Housing (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 1.

2. Gottlieb, 5.

3. Lois Davidson Gottlieb Architectural Collection, Ms1997-003, Special Collections, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Va.

4. Gottlieb, 231.