The Persistence of Elisabeth Martini, Architect
“Miss Martini is a very Goliath in persistence,” S. M. Franklin wrote in a 1914 profile of the architect Elisabeth A. Martini (1886 – 1984). Although this observation was made regarding Martini’s insistence that architects from whom she sought work explain why her gender was a disqualifying factor, it could have as easily been said about her determination to fund and receive training, find employment, or pursue her career.
Martini was born in Brooklyn in 1896 to German immigrant parents. Her father was a Congregational minister. Martini attended high school in Fitchburg, Massachusetts before taking classes at the Pratt Institute and Columbia University in New York. She partly funded her tuition by working as a chambermaid, teaching German to children, and selling books.
Martini and her family moved to Chicago in 1909 where she set about finding work in an architect’s office. “At one time,” Martini wrote, “I made as many as ninety calls before securing work, and the total number of my calls and letters can be multiplied by this number.” She applied using her initials instead of her first name and was called into offices, only to be rejected on the basis of her gender. To support herself during her job search, Martini learned stenography. After gaining a foothold in an architect’s office as a stenographer, she moved into the drafting room. To hold on to her position during slow times, she would do other tasks—like helping an employer’s wife clean her pantry—until the architectural work picked up.
Martini’s rendering for a cottage in Englefield, Illinois (National Real Estate Journal, April 1917).
To help overcome gendered skepticism about her qualifications, Martini took the state licensing exam in 1913. The only woman to take the exam that year, she was one of only 16 who passed it; 38 men failed. She became the only female licensed architect in Chicago and one of only two in the state. “Even then architects still hesitated to employ me,” Martini wrote, so when a former employer promised to direct work to her that he didn’t have time for, “with 25 cents for expenses and many a brave hope,” she opened her own office.
In addition to designing homes, Martini’s known projects include a church and small office building. She believed the primary duty of an architect was “to plan that the spirit of harmony prevails. The labor saving devices economizing of money, and skillful adjusting of the different parts all tend to bring about our common goal—contentment.”
While Martini was pleasantly surprised to find contractors quite willing to carry out her instructions, she ran into problems with some of her clients. “Because I was a woman, a pioneer and beginner, they seemed to think I ought to be willing to work for the honor alone. …[H]onor will not pay the office rent and living expenses.”
Between having her own firm and what Martini described as “Woman’s recent invasion of almost every field of industry” during World War I, Martini found greater acceptance from her male colleagues after 1918. Still, she felt her singularity. In 1921, she ran an announcement in a local newspaper stating, “Only Girl Architect Lonely: Wanted—to meet all of the women architects in Chicago to form a club.” Although Martini was still the only licensed female architect in the city, draftswomen responded and they formed the Chicago Women’s Drafting Club.
Martini moved to the Detroit area around 1934 and became licensed in Michigan through reciprocity. In 1943, after she had been practicing in Michigan for almost ten years, Martini applied for membership in the professional society the American Institute of Architects. She resigned her membership two years later. Elisabeth Martini died in Tennessee in 1984 at age 98.
Sources:
Elisabeth A. Martini, “How I Became an Architect,” Life and Labor, September 1918, 195 – 196.
Elisabeth A. Martini, “Plan for a Cottage in Englefield,” National Real Estate Journal, April 1917, 17.
S. M. Frankin, “Elisabeth Martini, Architect: A Pioneer in an Old Profession,” Life and Labor, February 1914, 40 – 43.
Landmarks Illinois, “Elisabeth Martini.”
The AIA Historical Directory of American Architects, s.v. “Martini, Elizabeth A.”
Mary Otis Stevens, “Struggle for Place: Women in Architecture: 1920 – 1960,” in Susana Torre, ed., Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1977): 88.
“Woman Passes Architect’s Test,” November 12, 1913, Chicago Tribune, 5.