Louise Blanchard Bethune: Every Woman her Own Architect
By Kelly Hayes McAlonie (State University of New York Press, 2023)
Architect, mother, cyclist, partner: Buffalo architect Louise Bethune was all of these and more. And although she was the first professional woman architect in the United States, her story has remained largely untold.
In a notable new book—one of two biographies of Bethune to appear in the past decade—architect and Canadian ex-pat Kelly Hayes McAlonie offers a comprehensive and compelling account of Bethune’s life and career. What may at first glance seem like a minor story in a minor place is, in fact, an inspiring history of everyday professional determination and ethics, situated in a region that was a centre of innovation and wealth at the time.
The thoughtfully researched narrative offers an extensive look into Bethune’s career, including the founding of her office in 1881, where she was later joined by her husband, Robert Bethune, and then by architect William Fuchs. Together, the “partnership of equals” designed numerous residential, commercial, and public buildings, especially schools. In 1888, Bethune was the first woman elected to the American Institute of Architects, and in 1889, she became the AIA’s first female fellow.
Louise’s crowning achievement was as lead designer and construction supervisor of the 1904 Hotel Lafayette in Downtown Buffalo, the largest luxury hotel of its decade. (The building was renovated and its public areas were restored to their gilded glory in 2012.) The hotel is one of the office’s 179 built and unbuilt works, many still standing, but even more demolished, which are documented in an appendix of the book. I wish that there had been a map associated with the list to allow readers to visually locate (and potentially visit) the remaining buildings.
Though privileged in many respects on account of her race and social mobility, Louise also faced misogyny and discrimination, and was radically pragmatic by necessity. While a pioneer, she was not a feminist advocate and did not officially participate in the suffragist movement. She was, however, according to Hayes McAlonie, “engaged in women’s equality on her own terms.” We learn unequivocally that Bethune was a staunch believer in a women’s right to equal pay for equal work. It was this principled attitude that prevented her from competing for the design of the Women’s Pavilion at the Chicago World’s Fair. Bethune was well positioned to win the competition, but refused to enter, since the award was only one tenth what male designers earned for the other pavilions.
Bethune was also a cycling enthusiast: she was the first woman in Buffalo to own a bicycle, and a cofounder of the Women’s Wheel and Athletic Club. It is as a “wheeler” that readers may connect to Bethune most viscerally, imagining the physical constraints of the 19th-century garments worn—and eventually shed, along with the social roles they implied—when mounting a bicycle and claiming the freedoms it afforded.
Author Kelly Hayes McAlonie shares a relationship across time with Bethune: though originally Canadian, Kelly is now based in Western New York, and was the next woman in Buffalo, after Bethune, to successfully become a fellow with the AIA. In the author’s words, “the parallels gave me a unique insight into her life and career, and it certainly enhanced my passion in researching and telling her story.” Through this book, Hayes McAlonie continues her advocacy for women in the architectural profession—an earlier accomplishment was working with Despina Stratigakos to convince Mattel to bring Architect Barbie to market.
As a humanistic biography, Louise Blanchard Bethune: Every Woman Her Own Architect presents Louise as a pioneering professional, but also in her multiple roles as a mother, a spouse, a property owner, and a person with hobbies (wheeling, history and genealogy). In this sense, the book is an intimate and timely portrait that speaks to the continuing need for architects—of all genders—to espouse a moral compass, to pursue work-life balance, and to provide a professional standard of care—all pressing topics for the practice of architecture today.