Our president takes to the airwaves

Listen to our own Acting President, Jennifer Walkowski, on the radio program "On Target" hosted by State Supreme Court Justice Penny Wolfgang.

Congratulations

Congratulations on setting up the blog, Bruce, and welcome all fans of architecture in Buffalo & the surrounding area!  For those who haven't seen it, we have a modest website here:
http://sites.google.com/site/buffalownysah/

We are the Society of Architectural Historians! (Louise Bethune Chapter)

We are the Louise Bethune Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. We meet monthly at various venues, in and around Buffalo, NY. More details will be added in later posts.

First, a little bit about who Louise Bethune was and why she was so very important:

Louise Bethune (July 21, 1856 – December 18, 1913), born Jennie Louise Blanchard in Waterloo, New York, was the firstAmerican woman known to have worked as a professional architect. The Blanchard family moved to Buffalo, New York when Louise was a child. She graduated from the Buffalo High School (now Hutchinson-Technical High School) in 1874 and began her architectural career in 1876 as a draftsman for English-born architect Richard A. Waite. In 1881, she opened her own office in Buffalo, earning her distinction as the nation's first professional woman architect. Shortly after, she married fellow architect Robert Bethune. The couple had one son, Charles, in 1883.

Eventually Louise and Robert worked together under the name Bethune, Bethune & Fuchs. They were among the first in the United States to design a structure with a steel frame and concrete slabs. Louise designed few private residences because the compensation was poor. Most of the firm's commissions were industrial, commercial, educational, and public facilities in the Buffalo area.

She was the first female member of the American Institute of Architects and was named a Fellow of the AIA in 1889. Buffalo'sHotel Lafayette, completed in 1904, is her masterpiece.^[1] Increasing scholarly attention to Bethune resulted in the first known doctoral dissertation on her, in 2007.^[2] She is also identified as the first woman in Buffalo to purchase a bicycle.^[3]