Designing women have been in L.A. since Victorian times but the first was not licensed until 1931
Nearly 40% of today’s architectural designers are female, but last century, they were an endangered species. “Only 1% of architects are women,” Jean Driskel of the American Institute of Architects told the Los Angeles Times in 1968. “There are fewer than 20 in Southern California.” That was around the time Fran Offenhauser was beginning her studies. “When I applied first to architecture school in 1967, the doors were slammed shut,” the Hollywood architect says. “My name being Frances, they thought I was Francis. I arrived and they said, ‘Sorry, no women.’”
Julia Morgan designed a beach house for movie star Marion DaviesCredit: Courtesy of the Department of Archives and Special Collections, William H. Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University.
A half-century earlier, pioneering woman architect Julia Morgan was hard at work building YWCAs in Pasadena and San Pedro as well as movie star Marion Davies’ home in Santa Monica (now the Annenberg Beach House) and the recently restored Herald Examiner building Downtown.
Arizona State University recently moved into the restored Herald Examiner building DowntownCredit: Photo by Deanna Dent/Arizona State University
Morgan became a licensed architect on March 1, 1904, the first in the state of California, but she lived in San Francisco. California became the second state in the U.S. to require licensing in 1901, around the time L.A. ladies Ida F. McCain and Kate Lockwood (Squire) Nevins were advertising their design services in the phone book. Both moved to the Bay Area and ended up joining fringe communes.
Ruins of Llano del Rio near LancasterCredit: Photo by Konrad Summers
In 1910, Clara C. Alden told the census man she was an architectural draughtsman. She crafted her own house in South L.A. and a mansion in Riverside. Alice Constance Austin designed homes for the utopian socialist community of Llano del Rio near Lancaster in 1914.
Architect Edith NorthmanCredit: Photo via Wikipedia
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The likeliest candidate for first female architect in L.A. is Edith Mortensen Northman. The Danish designer and a male partner built apartments through the 1920s. She was officially licensed by 1931 and appears to have been a capitalist, especially adept at designing gas stations.
Patent for a Union 76 Station in WestwoodCredit: United States Patent Office