Check out these amazing women
After writing Women of Steel and Stone, I kept finding more amazing architects, engineers, and landscape designers. Whether while doing more research or people telling me at book signings the stories about their favorite STEM heroine or (in some cases) family members, I felt they needed their story told. Here are some of them.
“I just thought of myself as an individual doing what I had to do. Looking back, I am reminded that my career presented many challenges and often took precedence over my personal. However, along with the challenges, came many rewards and much fulfillment.”
— India Boyer
India Boyer
India Boyer was the first female in Ohio to sit for and pass the state architecture examination; as well as, the first woman to graduate from Ohio State University in their architecture program. When India retired in 1975, she lived in Mount Washington, a suburb of Cincinnati—the town I grew up in. I wonder if she was combing the shelves at the local public library with me. When I learned India was the engineer in charge of the building of the Beechmont Levee—the main road we drove on almost everyday in my childhood—that was one of the most surprising moments while I was writing this book. It was truly a full circle discovery for me.
India Boyer was born on June 27, 1907, in Sidney, Ohio—located near the mid-west section of the state, between Toledo and Cincinnati. Ethel and Calvin Boyer named their baby daughter after India Schoaff, a family friend. India’s mother was the first woman to serve on the Perry Township Board of Education. Her father was a successful agriculturalist. India’s older brother, Ralph, graduated from Ohio State University, with a degree in electrical and mechanical engineering. Her younger brother, Howard, studied metallurgy at Ohio State, but withdrew the summer after his first year after he lost his leg in a farming accident. He became a self-taught metallurgist.
After India graduated as valedictorian of her class at Pemberton High School, she didn’t enter college right away. “I felt I was not quite ready for college at 18, so I chose to work in the office at the Sidney Machine Tool Company. I made $10 a week,” India explained. But, in the fall of 1926, she enrolled in Ohio State University, the first year it opened its doors to women. Only one of six who enrolled, she had the full support of both her parents and her brothers. Surprised to learn that military training was a requirement of the architectural program, she refused to participate. “I saw no point in spending my time marching on the field with the male students. In my senior year, the requirement was eliminated!” she said. After the first year, the other women dropped out due to the difficult workload—only India remained. She explained, “They chose other fields, like journalism. I had no support except for that first year.” India spoke out once when she was not invited to apply for a program to study architecture in France during the summer. India later recalled: “When I learned that I would not be eligible to take the exam, I became very upset and protested my exclusion. I was told that I could not be included in the competition because I might win and there were no facilities for women there.” By the end of the program, India’s tenacity and talent gained the respect of the other male students. While she struggled to compete in an all-day design project, two senior male students appeared by her side and helped her complete the project.
The summer between her junior and senior years, she worked for Joseph Bradford, the architect for the university—a job she had hoped to continue after graduation. At graduation in 1930, out of the 1,450 students only 11 received degrees in architecture. India was the first woman to graduate from Ohio State University in architecture. But, after graduation, the Great Depression hit and there were no jobs to be had. Her plans to obtain a graduate degree at Columbia University in New York City were also crushed due to the financial state of the country. The 1930 census shows that she was a lodger at the home of Fred and Mary Hitchcock, both university professors. India returned back to her family’s home and was unable to find work for four years.
After a six-month temporary appointment with the U.S. Army Corp of Engineer, India was offered and accepted a permanent job working on navigation and flood control projects. “I found it much more challenging,” she explained. “After the great flood of 1937, everyone wanted protection from the ravages of Mother Nature. I traveled throughout the tri-state area inspecting not only flood control projects, but other engineering projects as well.”
In 1939, she was appointed as head of the architectural section for the Army Corps’ Flood Control and Military Projects , designing floodwalls , dams , and bridges throughout the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys. She supervised the construction of the Beechmont Levee and a girder bridge in Lawrence , Indiana . At this time, she also continued to take classes in Civil Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. In 1941, she passed the architecture exam became the first female in Ohio to sit for and pass the state architecture examination.
She resigned her position in 1945 to pursue her original goal, a private practice. With three co-workers, they founded Vogt, Ivers, Semens and Associates in Cincinnati. “They saw that I was more qualified to manage some engineering and architectural work that they couldn’t do. They offered to take me in the partnership as an associate partner and Director of the Architectural Division,” she explained. About her role in the industry, she said, “It was dominated by men. I had to get used to that. Men didn’t hire women.”
India worked on several major Cincinnati-area construction projects including Ryerson Steel Company, WCPO-TV studios, King’s Island Amusement Park, Provident Bank, the Federal Building, and Elmwood Place School. In Ohio, she was responsible for the design of the Shawnee State Park, the Ironton Floodwall, and the First Salem Bridge over the Great Miami River in Dayton. Her Fox River Bridge in Aurora, Illinois, a five-arch, 1 , 500-foot span , is recognized as the first thin-shell concrete arch bridge built in the United States. After a heart attack in 1975, India retired but continued to work as a consultant for the Hamilton County Park District. In 1982, India was honored a YWCA Women of Achievement. And, in 1983, she received the Outstanding Alumnus Award from The Ohio State University.
As she approached her 90th birthday, she explained, “I just thought of myself as an individual doing what I had to do. Looking back, I am reminded that my career presented many challenges and often took precedence over my personal. However, along with the challenges, came many rewards and much fulfillment.” She lived in Mount Washington, a suburb just up the hill from her first major project, the Beechmont Levee, until her death in 1998.
While researching this piece, I suddenly remembered that my father’s engineering consulting firm—that he ran for over 50 years in Cincinnati—did all the engineering work on the Shawnee State Park Lodge. I can still hear him announcing to my mother, “I’m going to run up to Portsmouth for the day for field inspection on the lodge.” Wish I knew if they ever worked together at some point. India was fortunate to have parents who supported her aspirations. My parents also gave me the freedom to pursue whatever field I choose. That’s so important today, especially when we are learning that one of the main factors in whether or not a young girl decides to enter a STEM profession is through the support of her parents—research shows that many parents are directing their daughters into other less competitive fields for women.
For our future, I think we’d all agree that we should encourage the talents, minds, and passions of all our children. They are the key to the shaping and building our world.
“For a well-designed landscape heals the body, mind, and spirit. ”
— Martha Brookes Hutcheson
Martha Brookes Hutcheson *
Martha Brookes Brown Hutcheson was born in New York City in 1871.
Her father, Joseph Henry Brown, was a dry goods merchant. Her mother, Ellen Douglas Brookes Brown, was a Mayflower descendant. The five Brown children studied with private tutors and went to private schools. As was the fashion for families in New York City high society, they spent summers in Vermont at their great-uncle’s estate, Fern Hill. Martha spent the entire summer playing in the garden and fields—digging up plants, transplanting trees, arranging flowerbeds.
When Martha was ten years old, her mother bought the Fern Hill estate. She presented the garden to Martha and told her she could do whatever she wished on the grounds. Martha learned from its hidden lessons. In her teens, Martha went on several trips to Europe with her parents, because “The Grand Tour” was what every young debutante did to ready for marriage. Martha studied the gardens of England, France, and Italy. She made notes on each plant and sketched what she saw. Back home, classes at the New York School of Applied Design for Women filled her time. She studied mechanical drawing, and fabric and book design.
One day, Martha went to visit her brother, Douglas, who was the House Doctor at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Looking around at the bare hospital grounds, Martha was shocked.
“What a terrible waste of opportunity for beauty,” she explained. “For a well-designed landscape heals the body, mind, and spirit. Think of the hundreds of patients, who could see it or go to it, in convalescence.”
Martha set out to learn everything she could on how to become a Landscape Architect. She went to the New York City office of Beatrix Farrand, the one and only practicing Landscape Architect in America. She discovered that the first course in Landscape Architecture had just opened at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology… and, it was open to women!
Fired with the desire to enter the Institute, she began at once to study the math, which they required for entrance. But, when Martha told her parents of her plans, they cried, “A well-bred woman does not work.”
With a small bequest, she paid her own tuition. On opening day of fall term at MIT, Martha gathered her courage. She walked around the building three times before she got the courage to walk up the steps and into the lecture hall.
Martha designed many gardens and numerous estates with full-flowering arbors and lovely grille gates. Her gardening passion lives on in a book that she wrote, The Spirit of the Garden, in which she shares her love of flowers, hedges, arbors, gates, greenhouses, and water.
*Portion of picture book manuscript for submission