Born: 16 November 1874, United States
Died: 11 November 1971
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
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.
A different sort of experimentation, social and urban in nature, drove Alice Hands and Mary Gannon, two young and dynamic architects in New York City, to form the country’s first female architectural partnership in 1894. Among other ambitions, Hands and Gannon sought to better house the city’s marginal populations, an early example of designing for social justice. To study the problems faced by the poor, Gannon and Hands lived in tenements and experienced their deficiencies first-hand, something that few male colleagues were willing to do. On this basis, they designed model tenements that were praised by housing reformers for being affordable, sanitary, practical, and even beautiful. In 1895, Hands and Gannon designed a series of residences in New York City for self-supporting working women, a new social type that had become highly visible in the nation’s urban centers at the end of the nineteenth century. When Hands and Gannon disbanded their firm sometime after the turn of the century, they slipped into obscurity, as did the story of their unusual collaboration.
Read more (Wikipedia)
Read more (Pioneering Women of Architecture)