Читать книгу For the Record - Joan Grierson - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWOMEN GRADUATES IN ARCHITECTURE
1920 TO 1960, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
1920s
1930s
Phyllis Cook Carlisle
Ann Gauthier Malott
1940s
Martha Stewart Leitch
Margaret Synge Dryer
Mary Imrie
Alice Ayer Alison
Shelagh Macdonnell Rounthwaite
Isobel Grace Stewart
Jean Taylor Strange
Joan Robinson Grierson
Ruthetta Kaplan Reiss
1950s
Lennox Grafton
Catherine Currie Smale
Margaret Gisborne Christie
Marjorie Sewell Shepland
Audrey Koehler Christie
Joan Burt
Joanna Barclay de Tolly Ozdowski
Kathleen Connor Irvine
Mary Patterson Clark
Monica Nomberg
Natalie Salkauskis Liacas
EVENTS
The League of Nations convenes in Paris.
William Lyon Mackenzie King is prime minister of Canada.
In the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin dies at 53. Joseph Stalin takes control.
Military leader Chiang Kai-shek becomes leader of the Republic of China.
Adolf Hitler publishes Mein Kampf.
Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. president on the death of Warren G. Harding.
The discovery of insulin is announced at the University of Toronto.
First transatlantic telephone communication and first network radio broadcast.
First transmission of television.
Charles Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic.
Air mail service begins in northern Canada.
October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday, the stock market crash marks the start of the Great Depression.
LIFE
This decade is known as the Roaring Twenties. Women bob their hair and smoke in public. The flapper dress appears and the Charleston hits the dance floor. Movies, radio and the gramophone replace vaudeville and bring entertainment into the home.
Flying is all the rage. Eileen Vollick of Hamilton, Ontario, is the first woman pilot to take off and land a plane on skis.
Agnes Macphail, an independent candidate from Grey County, Ontario, is the first elected woman to sit in the House of Commons.
The marketplace introduces strained baby foods and the first motel.
MODEL T FORD 1922 TOURING CAR. By 1927 the Ford Motor Co.had produced 15 million automobiles.
WASSILY CHAIR, designed at the Bauhaus by Hugarian-born Marcel Lajos Breuer in 1926, manufactured by vienna’s Gebrüder Thonet.
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, Ottawa, Ontario, 1916–1927, Pearson & Marchand, Architects; EDMONTON PUBLIC LIBRARY, Edmonton, Alberta, 1923, G.M. MacDonald and H.A. MacDonald and H.A. Magoon, Architects; PLAN OF THE GARDEN VILLAGE FOR DOMINION STEEL PRODUCTS CO., Of Brantford, Ontario, 1923, Gray, Architect, AIA.
STATISTICS 1921 POPULATION OF CANADA 8,787,949 Population of U.S. 105,710,620 In the 1920s the urban population in Canada surpassed that of the rural areas. Architecture graduates in Canada 3 WOMEN 135 men
BOOKSJalna by Mazo de la Roche; The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot; Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne.
FILMSThe Gold Rush, starring Charlie Chaplin; The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson; Nanook of the North, the first feature-length documentary.
RADIO Sports; Will Rogers; the Metropolitan Opera.
MUSIC Bessie Smith records the blues; Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong joins King Oliver’s jazz band; George Gershwin composes Rhapsody in Blue.
ART Emily Carr exhibits at the National Gallery and begins an association with the Group of Seven.
ARCHITECTURE
In Canada in the 1920s, Beaux-Arts Neoclass.mapicism and the Gothic Revival continued to dominate architectural design, especially for public buildings such as Union Station in Toronto, the Edmonton Public Library, and the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. This was all about to change.
The modernist movement in architecture was initiated by a small group of architects in Europe, among them Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Germany, Le Corbusier in France, and J.J. Oud in Holland. In 1919, Gropius founded the Bauhaus, a design school that sought to relate art and architecture to technology and the practical needs of modern life. In 1923, Le Corbusier wrote Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture), advocating functional design, honest use of materials and basic geometric shapes. (In Canada, the igloo would have met these requirements.)
In England, Elisabeth Whitworth Scott won the 1928 international competition for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was the first major public building in England to achieve a dignified effect without recourse to historical sources. Women were making an appearance as planners as well; the MIT-educated architect Greta Gray designed a garden village for the workers at Dominion Steel in Brantford, Ontario, as early as 1923.
In Canada, new ideas in design were absorbed slowly, with historical styles continuing to dominate. There were six schools of architecture in Canada at this time. At the University of Toronto, architecture was a four-year course with graduating class.mapes of less than ten students; the degree granted was a Bachelor of Science until 1923, when it became a Bachelor of Architecture. That same year, Eric Arthur joined the staff from England and began to develop the curriculum in a more contemporary direction. In 1928, the course was lengthened to five years.
Marjorie Hill had enrolled in architecture in 1916 at the University of Alberta. When the school closed during the First World War, she transferred to the University of Toronto and set a record in 1920 as the first woman in Canada to graduate with a degree in architecture.
BAUHAUS BUILDING, Dessau, Germany, 1926, workshop wing on the right, Walter Gropius, Architect; SHAKESPEARE MEMORIAL THEATRE, Stratford-upon-Avon, England, 1929–1932, Elisabeth Whitworth Scott, Architect.
B.A. 1916, B.A.Sc. 1920
1916 B.A., University of Alberta.
1916–1918 University of Alberta, first two years in the School of Architecture.
1918–1920 University of Toronto, third and fourth years in the Department of Architecture.
1920 B.A.Sc. (Architecture), University of Toronto. Worked at Eaton’s department store in interior design.
1921 Applied unsuccessfully to register with Alberta Association of Architects. Taught in a rural school in Alberta.
1922 Worked at MacDonald and Magoon, Architects, Edmonton: work included a Carnegie library in Edmonton. Returned to University of Toronto for postgraduate studies in town planning.
1923–1928 Moved to New York for summer design course at Columbia University, followed by work with architects Marcia Mead and Katherine Budd.
1925 Registered, Alberta Association of Architects.
1928–1929 Returned to office of MacDonald and Magoon, Architects, in Edmonton.
1930 No architectural work was available. Marjorie Hill turned to weaving and glove making, teaching these crafts through the Depression.
1936 Moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where she became a master weaver.
1940 Architectural commissions led to part-time practice: residential renovations and conversion of houses to apartments.
1945–1963 Architectural practice continued after the war: houses, motel addition, fellowship hall, hospital.
1945 Elected to Victoria Town Planning Commission.
1953 Registered, Architectural Institute of British Columbia.
“One must have artistic talent, practical experience, professional knowledge, good business sense and executive ability, resourcefulness and a determination to persevere. With these assets, there is no reason why a woman should not be as successful as a man.” (Toronto Stat, June 15,1920)
“The principal product of a handicraft program should be better people … Heredity, attention to diet, no smoking or drinking, lots of music and reading the papers keeps me going.” (Vancouver Sun, May 29, 1984)
CONVOCATION AT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO, 1920. Front page of Toronto Star on June 15, 1920. “Miss E.M. Hill is … the first woman to graduate from the School of Architecture.”
1963 Retired after twenty-eight years of architectural practice. Continued to teach weaving and produce works for sale: “I am fully occupied with congenial and satisfying tasks.”
1985 Marjorie Hill died at the age of eighty-nine in Victoria.
10-SUITE APARTMENT, Fort Street, Victoria, B.C., 1954.
GLENWARREN LODGE, Balmoral Avenue, Victoria, B.C., a 63-bed private hospital 1962. (There were subsequent additions.) (Left) main floor plan.
B.Arch. 1923
1917 University of Toronto, completed first year in general arts. Enrolled at School of Architecture.
1919–1921 Interrupted studies after second year to teach in Rearville, Alberta. After two years, returned to university.
1923 B.Arch., University of Toronto.
1923–1927 Employed as an artist doing wash drawings and watercolour by Toronto art firm.
1925 Architectural commission – a fourplex – for her father, a Toronto builder.
1927 Employed by Workmen’s Compensation Board, Toronto, processing medical claims.
1958 Retired from Workmen’s Compensation Board.
1982 Jean Hall died at the age of eighty-six in Toronto.
Toward the end of First World War, an appeal was made to university students to volunteer as teachers in the Canadian Prairies. Jean Hall and her sister, a medical student, were among those who responded. Jean was sent to Rearville, east of Calgary. Because there was no accommodation for the new teacher, the residents built a sod house for her.
In the years following graduation, Jean Hall tried repeatedly to find work in an architectural office. By 1931, the effects of the Depression were widespread – her father’s construction firm was one of many forced to close. According to her sister, Jean was disappointed that she had been unable to have a career in architecture. For all that, she may still have been the first Canadian woman graduate in architecture to have seen a building of her design actually built.
U OF T ARCHITECTURAL CLUB, 1922, executive vice-president Jean Hall (centre).
FOURPLEX, 63 Jerome Street, Toronto, 1925; (left) floor plan of first floor.
JEAN HALL outside her sod house in Alberta, 1919–1921.
WAR MEMORIAL, student work, 1923.
B.Arch. 1927
1927 B.Arch., University of Toronto.
1927–1930 Worked in the office of William Lyon Somerville, Architect, Toronto: residential work.
1930 Married American architect Carrol Harding and moved to Weston, Massachusetts.
1941 Worked in the office of Page and Steele, Architects, Toronto, then returned to Boston, Massachusetts. Records are incomplete.
1958 Married George P. Carlton.
1961 Elizabeth Carlton died in Peterborough, New Hampshire, at the age of sixty-one.
In 1929, while working in Toronto, “Betty” Lalor spoke at the Art Gallery of Toronto on the development of a Canadian style in architecture. The same year, she worked independently on the conversion of a farmhouse to a summer residence on Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region of Ontario. The project was published in the July 1929 issue ofCanadian Homes and Gardens.
SMALL BREAKFAST DORMER in the sloping east roof features shelves shelves and cupboards to hold dishes and serving trays.
FARMHOUSE renovation plans.
DRAWINGS OF THE OLD FARMHOUSE “before” (opposite) and “after” (right). “The chief problems presented to the architect were to enlarge the living room to a size in keeping with summer hospitality, to provide greater verandah space and to create a more interesting exterior. The roofline was lowered, the small balcony moved to the side, the verandah now offers a more spacious welcome and the use of small-paned windows softened the general aspect of the house.” (Canadian Homes and Gardens, July 1929)
EVENTS
The devastating effects of the Depression are widespread. The numbers of jobless soar, and there are demonstrations in London, New York and Paris.
Mackenzie King returns as prime minister in 1935, after his Liberal party defeats R.B. Bennett and the Conservatives.
Franklin Roosevelt is president of the United States.
Joseph Stalin purges thousands of dissidents.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War erupts.
In 1937, the Japanese intensify their invasion of eastern China.
Adolf Hitler is made chancellor of Germany. He annexes Austria, Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia before invading Poland.
September 3, 1939, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany; Canada declares war a week later.
1937 VW PROTOTYPE VEHICE. Volkswagen, the “people’s car,” designed by Ferdinand Porsche.
HARDOY OR BUTTERFLY CHAIR, designed by Jorge Ferrari-Harding for Grupo Austral, 1938.
LIFE
This is a hard-times decade, without unemployment insurance, universal health care or welfare. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is established in 1936: radio offers some escape into the world of entertainers, game shows, soaps and music. Jazz gives way to swing, with the big bands of Guy Lombardo, Count Basie, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.
Drive-in movies, laundromats, sliced bread, Skippy peanut butter and Superman appear.
Women claim a place in the sky: Amelia Earhart solos the Atlantic, flying from west to east, and Beryl Markham follows suit, east to west. Skater Cecile Smith of Canada is runner-up to world champion Sonja Henie.
Cairine Wilson and Iva Fallis are the first Canadian women to be appointed to the Senate.
CAPITOL THEATRE and office building, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1930, Murray Brown, Architect; MARINE BUILDING, Vancouver, 1930, McCarter and Nairne, Architects; RESIDENCE OF LAWREN HARRIS, Toronto, 1933, Alexndra Biriukova, Architect.
STATISTICS 1931 POPULATION OF CANADA 10,376,786 Population of U.S. 122,775,046 Architecture graduates in Canada 16 WOMEN 266 men
BOOKSSuch Is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan; The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
FILMSThe Silent Enemy, a film about the Ojibway of Northern Ontario battling hunger; The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland.
RADIOThe Happy Gang on CBC; Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds.
MUSIC Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians; “Anything Goes” by Cole Porter; “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?” by Jay Gorney and E.Y. Harburg.
THEATRE Royal Winnipeg Ballet founded.
ART Canadian Group of Painters (including Lawren Harris, A.J. Casson and A.Y. Jackson) grows out of the Group of Seven.
ARCHITECTURE
The Depression had a devastating effect on the profession in the years leading up to the Second World War. As early as 1931, architectural offices in Canada had reduced their staffs drastically, and many architects were out of work.
In the world of design, modern architecture made a name for itself at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. It became recognized not only in Europe but in the Soviet Union and the United States. In 1932, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibit titled The International Style, which introduced modern architecture to the American public. The next year the Chicago World’s Fair opened, marking a “Century of Progress.” The buildings were described as a shock to the middle-aged, but to the young, a measure of the future. The New York World’s Fair in 1939 gave further impetus to modernism.
In Europe, the Bauhaus, now headed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, moved to Berlin in 1933 but within months was closed by the Nazi government. Its members dispersed but continued to teach, in England and in the United States.
It was also in the 1930s that modernism reached Canada. Commercial and residential work responded more wholeheartedly than corporate and government establishments, where historical styles were still preferred as an expression of power and tradition. Office buildings were becoming higher and higher. The tallest building in the British Empire in 1931 was the Canadian Bank of Commerce tower in Toronto.
The Dominion Housing Act was passed, followed by a nationwide competition for low-cost housing. On the West Coast, innovative residential work was beginning to appear.
In 1939, the University of British Columbia established a school of architecture headed by Fred Lasserre, an advocate of the International Style. Across Canada during the 1930s, a total of 16 women graduated with a degree in architecture from the following schools: University of Alberta, 3; University of Manitoba, 9; University of Toronto, 4.
BOURDON HOUSE, Sillery, Quebec, 1934, Robert Blatter, Architect; CANADIAN BANK OF COMMERCE head office, Toronto, 1931, York & Sawyer, Architects (New York) with Darling & Pearson, Architects (Toronto); THOMSON BUILDING, Timmins, Ontario, 1939, H. Sheppard & G. Masson, Architects, the birthplace of the Thomson newspaper empire.
B.Arch. 1930, M.Arch. 1937
1930 B.Arch., University of Toronto. Toronto Architectural Guild Bronze Medal.
1931 Worked in the office of a German architect in Jerusalem.
1932–1935 Postgraduate studies, School of Architecture, University of Toronto.
1935–1937 Intermittent professional work in the architectural office of P.A. Deacon and Professor Eric Arthur; factory job in a jewellery firm.
1937 M.Arch., University of Toronto – a delay in the granting of her degree was attributed by Davidson to the “radical modern design” of her thesis. Secretary to the first Ontario Committee on Housing. Married Harry Davidson.
1938–1942 Two children born.
1940 on Independent work: architectural negotiator of her husband’s land-development business. Designed two houses in Toronto; designed furniture for family and friends. An ex officio member of the jury for the design of the new city hall. Volunteer research assistant to Eric Arthur during the writing of his book No Mean City.
1986 Beatrice Davidson died at the age of seventy-seven in Toronto.
“My architectural education did more for me than anything else in any way. It made me open my eyes and led me into a constantly expanding world.
“There was a tradition for those students who won the Guild Medal being offered employment by a certain firm. When I won, however, my lack of experience on the construction site was cited as sufficient reason to break with tradition. I was told to return in five years with proof of experience and then I would be hired – as long as I signed an agreement not to marry for another ten years.”
1930 FOUTH-YEAR ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS AND STAFF. Beatrice Centner is fourth from the left. CHAIR, contemporary design adapted by Davidson.
DAVIDSON RESIDENCE, Cortleign Boulevard, Toronto, 1942; plans showing the first and second floors.
DINING AND SERVING TABLES, contemporary design adapted by Davidson.
School of Architecture, University of Toronto 1928–1932
1932 Completed four years of study and design thesis at School of Architecture, University of Toronto.
1932–1936 Sales clerk at Eaton’s department store in Toronto.
1937 With Edward Helm, a Hungarian officer and toolmaker, travelled to Tahiti, where they married and planned to settle on a plantation. Wrote articles about life in the South Seas for the Toronto Telegram.
1937 As war tensions increase, the Helms returned to Toronto. Research for a history of Peel County.
1941–1945 Worked as engineering draftsman with Canadian Industries in Windsor, Ontario.
1945 Moved to Los Angeles. Worked as engineering draftsman for a vehicle parts manufacturing firm.
1947 Moved to Eureka, California.
1947–1951 Worked as engineering draftsman, surveyor and mapmaker. Designed and supervised the building of the family house in Kneeland, California. (A second phase was added in 1973.)
1955–1956 Travelled around the world with her husband.
1956–1975 Employed by the office of the State Highway Division, retiring at the age of sixty-seven.
1982 Moved back to Eureka, following the death of her husband.
1993 Katharine Helm died in California.
Katharine Jefferys Helm was the daughter of C.W. Jefferys, well-known Canadian artist and member of the faculty of the School of Architecture, University of Toronto, from 1912 to 1939. While she was at the School of Architecture the length of the course changed from four to five years. There is no record of her graduating; nevertheless, the skills she acquired at university equipped her for thirty-five years of professional life in California.
1932 FOURTH-YEAR ARCHITECTURE STUDENTS AND STAFF. Katharine Jefferys is seated third from right.
B.Arch. 1938
1929 Registered in first-year architecture at the University of Toronto; Dama Lumley was already an elementary school teacher.
1934 Completed final year, School of Architecture. Among the nine students in that year, none had acquired the office experience required for graduation.
1935 Worked as a clerk, selling curtains at Eaton’s department store in Toronto.
1937 Display manager and consultant on interior decorating at Adams Furniture, a store in Toronto. Worked for John T. Findlay, Architect, St. Thomas, Ontario.
1938 B.Arch., University of Toronto. Travelled to Europe and Ireland.
1940 Married Alfred Bell, a chemical engineer, and moved to Windsor, Ontario, where two sons were born.
1946 Moved to Stratford, Ontario. First president and building chair of the new YWCA/YMCA. Organized the local chapter of the University Women’s Club.
1952 First meeting to organize the Stratford Festival was held at the Bell residence, marking the beginning of the Bells’ long-term active involvement with the Stratford Theatre Festival.
1960–1977 Juror for the Canadian Housing Design annual competition. Honorary secretary to the Stratford Festival Board. Awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal.
1979 Member of the Order of Canada is awarded to Dama and Alfred Bell in recognition of their work for the Stratford Festival. They were the first couple to be so honoured.
2001 Dama Lumley Bell died in Stratford, Ontario.
“I have been thinking a lot about my years at the school. It was hard work, sometimes we worked all night – and when the boys went to the burlesque show I would go to a movie or the library. When I think back on that training, I realize it has been invaluable in working with stage designers at Stratford. They have familiar problems to face – time and design and pressure.”
