Born: 21 July 1856, United States
Died: 18 December 1948
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Jennie Louise Blanchard
This entry is reprinted with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). It was written by Despina Stratigakos. All rights reserved.
In 1881, Buffalo native Louise Bethune became the first woman architect in the United States to open her own firm. Buffalo was booming, and its spirit of innovation attracted some of the country’s greatest architects, including H. H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Bethune designed public, commercial, and industrial buildings in the city, among them some of the first structures in the United States to use the new building technology of a steel frame and poured concrete slabs. Many consider the Hotel Lafayette, richly decorated in the French Renaissance style, her architectural masterpiece.
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