Women’s History Month 2012 is over

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But what a great month it was! During Women’s History Month, we recall that the pioneering legacy of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers is revealed not only in our museums and history books, but also in the fierce determination and limitless potential of our daughters and granddaughters.  US President Barak Obama March 2012

Welcome to our new website, with a new URL – womenshistory.net.au – with the 2012 Women’s History Month Women with a Plan Gallery plus a special feature article about how these women architects, town planners and landscape architects shaped our history. All the resources from the previous website will soon be available here.

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WHM event 15 May 2012

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Women with a Plan: Challenges and Opportunities

Panel Discussion with established and emerging designers and planners

Mortlock Chamber, State Library of South Australia

5:30 for 6:00,  15 May 2012        Bookings essential   

For further information   www.slsa.sa.gov.au

Margaret Hendry 1930-2001

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Margaret Hendry

Most of Canberra has been planned and designed by men and Margaret Hendry is one of the few women who have played a significant role in shaping the landscape of Australia’s national capital.

From 1963 to 1974 Margaret Hendry was a landscape architect with the National Capital Development Commission – the first woman appointed and one of only five female landscape architects in Australia at that time. She worked on the landscape of town centres, shopping centres, parks and playgrounds, schools, cemeteries, and large recreation areas.

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Barbara van den Broek 1932-2001

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Barbara van den Broek

Described as ‘a woman for all seasons’ Barbara van den Broek was a registered architect, town planner and landscape architect, as well as a person committed to lifelong learning.

A founding member of the Queensland Institute of Landscape Architects in 1965, she later served terms as secretary, and as president from 1973-75.

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Jean Verschuer 1925-

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Entrance to a stone building with trees in the foreground.Jean Verschuer, Lady Brodie-Hall is a prominent and respected West Australian landscape architect.

During the 1960s Jean Verschuer worked with the architectural firms of Forbes and Fitzhardinge and Summerhayes and Associates and was consultant to large public companies, private firms, government agencies and local councils on a range of projects. These included standard-gauge railway stations, the Salvation Army village in Hollywood Western Australia, and the design of major mining towns and their surrounds.

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Margaret Feilman 1921-

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Margaret FeilmanMargaret Feilman OBE was Perth’s first female town planner. She also had a successful career as an architect and landscape designer and was an early advocate for identifying and protecting  built heritage.

A founding member of the Western Australian Town Planning Institute in 1950, she was also – in 1959 – a founding member of the Western Australian branch of the National Trust of Australia.

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Marjorie Simpson 1924-2003

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Marjorie Simpson
South Australian architect Marjorie Constance (White) Simpson became the first female Life Fellow of the state chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1993.

She and her architect husband Peter Simpson worked for the Commonwealth Department of Works in Sydney and then in Adelaide. They designed their own home in both cities; their commissions included design and documentation of the Woomera Rocket Range in 1951.

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Judith Macintosh 1923-2009

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Judith MacintoshJudith (Moreau) Macintosh graduated from the University of Sydney in 1944 with honours in architecture, winning several major awards that showed her early brilliance.

The first woman to receive the University Medal in architecture, her plans for a modernist, curtain-wall skyscraper office building won the University’s Sulman Prize for Design.  The architectural plans for this building have now been recognised as being astonishingly progressive for their time.

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Margaret Findlay 1916- ?

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Margaret Keitha Findlay was the first registered female architect in Tasmania and the first woman in Tasmania to qualify as an associate of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects,becoming a member of the Institute’s state council. In 1944 she became the first female architect employed by the state’s Public Works Department.

In 1945 Margaret Findlay was appointed Instructor in Architectural Draftsmanship at the University of Sydney, the only female academic at the school, working there until her retirement in 1970. As the department grew she became responsible for an entire group of instructors.

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Eleanor Cullis-Hill 1913-2001

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Eleanor Cullis-HillEleanor Beresford (Grant) Cullis-Hill qualified in Sydney as an architect in the 1930s and was one of the first women to run a solo architectural practice.

Working from her home office she successfully combined a long-term, busy design business with the raising a large family.  Eleanor Cullis-Hill’s work is well represented by houses, domestic renovations and school buildings on Sydney’s northern suburbs, as well as in the Southern Highlands of NSW.

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Cynthea Teague 1907-2007

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Architectural drawing of a tall modern building.Architect Cynthea Mary Teague became the first woman in the executive level of the Commonwealth Public Service in 1964.

During her long public service career she was involved in many projects around Australia, including armament factories, schools and housing in Darwin, the Springvale Hostel in Melbourne,  overseas diplomatic accommodation, and Commonwealth office buildings in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Darwin.

In 1971 Cynthea Teague was awarded an MBE for her services to the Commonwealth.

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Mary Turner Shaw 1906-1990

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Mary Turner Shaw

In a long and varied career Mary (Mollie) Turner Shaw played many roles in architecture: designer (especially of interior fittings), project manager, public works architect , pioneer architectural librarian and historian.
Though she downplayed her success as an architect, she was a leader in opening new pathways for women architects.
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Winsome Hall Andrew 1905-1997

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Winsome Hall Andrew

Winsome Hall  graduated from the University of Sydney in 1928, then moved to England in the early 1930s where she worked on several large scale, modernist projects that received major awards.

In the mid 1930s she worked with Eric Andrew on the design for the Manly Surf Pavilion, an elegant, modernist structure which won the Sulman Award in New South Wales in 1939.  Her architectural portfolio of over 40 years covered a wide range of public, private and commercial work. Like many of her contemporaries, however, Hall Andrew’s overall contributions to the built environment have not been fully recognised.

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Elina Mottram 1903-1996

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Elina MottramElina Emily Mottram, a Brisbane trained architect, opened her own practice in 1924, the first woman architect to do so.  At the time of her retirement in 1975 she  had become the longest practising architect in Queensland.

Elina Mottram also studied landscape architecture, in 1967 enrolling at Queensland Institute of Technology in the state’s first such course.

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Heather Sutherland 1903-1953

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Heather SutherlandHeather Sutherland’s legacy is readily seen in Canberra’s earliest suburbs, where she and her husband Malcolm Moir designed houses between 1936 and 1953.

In the 1930s theirs was an adventurous architecture, ‘overtly modernist and avant garde’. In a city barely ten years old where conservative domestic styles were more evident, their work added a new character.

 

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Ellison Harvie 1902-1984

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Ellison HarvieMelbourne architect (Edythe) Ellison Harvie specialised in hospital planning and project administration, including the planning of the layout and interior schemes.

Ellison Harvie contributed to hospital projects in almost every Australian state, including Melbourne’s Mercy Hospital in East Melbourne (1934—36) and  the original four multi-storey buildings of the Royal Melbourne Hospital (1936-41).

In 1938 Ellison Harvie was the first woman to graduate with a Diploma of Architectural Design. In 1946 she became the first woman Fellow of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects.


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Margaret Morison 1900-1985

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Western Australia’s first woman architect,  Margaret Pitt Morison’s career spanned more than 64 years as practitioner, educator and historian.  She registered as an architect in October 1924 and worked and stiudied in Melbourne for the next four years.

In the 1930s she worked on the Perth buildings the Myola Club in Claremont, the Adelphi Hotel, the Karrakatta Club and the Emu Brewery; in the early 1940s in partnership with Heinz Jacobsohn she designed Perth residences including the Marginata Flats and a substantial house for herself and her father in the suburb of Dalkeith.

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Ellice Nosworthy 1897-1972

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Ellice Nosworthy

Ellice Maud Nosworthy was a practising architect for almost 50 years, graduating in 1922.

In the earliest cohort to enroll in the new architecture course at the University of Sydney under Leslie Wilkinson, she registered as an architect in 1923.

Her work included many houses; additions to the Women’s College at the University of Sydney; childcare centres for the Sydney Day Nursery, the Nursery Schools Association and the Karitane Mothercraft Society; and housing for the Kuring-gai Older Peoples’s Welfare Association.

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Edna Walling 1895-1973

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Edna WallingLandscape designer Edna Walling was a complex, talented and prodigious designer who devoted her life to her profession. Her far-sighted approach is as relevant today as at the peak of her career 70 years ago.

Edna Walling made  landscape drawing into an art form. Her plans are now treasured works of art, just as her few remaining gardens are highly valued.

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Eileen Good 1893-1986

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Painted portrait of Eileen Good.Australia’s first female academic in architecture, Eileen Good was appointed a demonstrator in the Architecture School of the University of Melbourne in 1924 and a lecturer in 1949. She  taught at the University until her retirement in 1961.

Eileen Good was also the University of Melbourne’s first woman graduate in Architecture in 1920; she later observed that she had wanted to study engineering but found this impossible for a woman student.

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Beatrice Hutton 1893-1990

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Beatrice Hutton

Beatrice May Hutton became Queensland’s first woman architect when she was accepted as an associate member of the Queensland Institute of Achitects in March 1916. She worked on many buildings in Rockhampton and also in Sydney, where she moved in late 1916.  In Sydney she worked as an architectural assistant.  She was registered in Sydney in 1923.

Beatrice (always called Bea) Hutton’s  first design was probably the 1915 house in Spencer Street Rockhampton for the manager of the  Bank of Australasia. Domestic architecture was her chief focus as she thought it was there that women architects could have a particular impact.

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Florence Taylor 1879-1969

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Florence TaylorFlorence Mary (Parsons) Taylor OBE made history when she became the first woman to qualify and practice professionally as an architect in Australia. Later she was to become a strong advocate of town planning as an important element in the built environment.

Her enduring legacy lies in the contribution she made for over fifty years as a major publisher, writer and editor in the fields of architecture, construction and town planning.

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