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American architect From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rose Connor AIA (March 4, 1892 – December 29, 1970) was an American architect. Called "one of the earliest and most successful women architects of the 20th century",[4] her architectural work was largely residential projects in Southern California, but she also did work for the U.S. military and Fuller Theological Seminary.[2]
Connor was born in Des Moines, Iowa[5] in 1892.[4] She was the daughter of William Connor and Eva Gatch. Her father was a lawyer and "prominent citizen and jurist"[6] in Des Moines who had served in the American Civil War. He had been born in Ireland and came to the United States as a boy.[6] She had three sisters, Elizabeth, Marjorie, and Dorothy.[6][3] Connor's father died at age 58 when she was a child.[6]
Connor attended Des Moines public schools until eleventh grade[7] and then continued her education abroad. She studied art & jewelry[5] at the Académie Colarossi in Paris[4] and attended the Birmingham School of Art in Birmingham, England.[8] Connor then moved back to the U.S. and studied interior decoration at the Parsons School of Design (then known as New York School of Fine and Applied Art).[9] She also attended Cooper Union.[5]
Starting in 1923, Connor made her living as a drafter for a series of architects, including T. Beverly Keim in Los Angeles, Allen & Collens in Boston, Soule & Murphy in Santa Barbara, and Reginald D. Johnson, W. L. Risley and Allison & Allison, all in Los Angeles.[10] During this period (from 1925 to 1930) she studied architecture at the Pasadena Atelier[7] of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design.[5]
Connor was licensed to practice architecture in California in 1936 and opened her own firm in Pasadena in October of that year.[10] She became a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1944.[10] Her practice was mainly residential commissions for professional women.[4] From 1946 to 1950 she also designed several small housing projects (from 16 to 74 houses) in Lakewood, Downey, and Anaheim.[11]
The Rev. Charles E. Fuller was a major patron of Connor's work. He and his wife Grace[12] commissioned eight separate houses from Connor for their own use or as rental properties at various times. Connor also worked as an associate architect with the firm of Orr, Strange & Inslee on the project to build Fuller Theological Seminary in 1953.[4]
Connor suspended her practice from February 1942 to April 1946 due to World War II.[11] During this time she worked for the United States Army Corps of Engineers[10] working on camouflage[5] and "other work."[11]
Connor often employed the landscape architects Florence Yoch and Lucile Council on her projects.[10] Another architect she worked with was John Byers with whom she designed an adobe house in San Gabriel in 1946.[13]
At the time Connor began her practice, women architects were rare. Connor was only the sixth woman to be admitted to AIA from California.[14] In 1948 Connor was one of only 10 women architects in California who had their own firms, according to the Los Angeles Times.[15] That same year, Architectural Record documented 1,119 women who had trained as architects but found that only 108 were actually practicing.[16] The two-part article showcased the work of 18 of them, including Connor.[9]
Connor was a member of Union Internationale des Femmes Architectes (UIFA)[3] and was elected to the national board of Association for Women in Architecture in 1958.[17] That year Connor researched the records of architects in all the U.S. states and found that at that time, there were only 320 women registered architects; there were seven states which had no women architects registered at all, and women represented about one percent of all the registered architects in the United States in her survey.[18]
Connor never married.[3] She was involved in charitable groups outside architecture including the Pasadena chapter of Zonta International and was a charter member of the Women's City Club of Pasadena.[3]
In 1964 Connor lost vision in her left eye due to temporal arteritis, and gave up her practice on the advice of her physicians.[19] She moved to Claremont, California that year[3] and became an emeritus member of AIA in 1965.[10] She died on December 29, 1970, in Claremont and was buried in the family plot in Woodland Cemetery in her hometown of Des Moines.[3]
The Art, Design & Architecture Museum has a collection of her drawings. The Schlesinger Library has papers related to UIFA donated by Connor.[20]
All of Connor's known architectural work was in California; here is a partial list:
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