Fay Kellogg, Architect of Big Things
Brooklyn-born Fay Kellogg (1871-1918) became an architect because of her father’s objection to her studying to become a doctor. She was pleased that he found architecture more palatable. After leaving medical school, Kellogg stayed in Washington, DC studying drawing and math for two years before returning to Brooklyn to study at the Pratt Institute for one year. After a year of being refused employment owing to her gender, she found work with R. L. Davis and worked on an armory and monastery with his firm while learning about the business of architecture. She moved to Beaux-Arts practitioners Carrère and Hastings for a year before traveling to Paris for further study.
Although the École des Beaux-Arts was not admitting women, Kellogg did secure a place in the studio of Marcel de Mancos where she worked on the same projects as the male students. She was not allowed to sit for the entrance examination. After talking to the American Ambassador and the president of the school, she asked a member of the chamber of deputies to introduce a bill admitting women to the École. He did so and the bill passed, but not in time for Kellogg to attend; after two years in Paris, she was ready to return home. When asked in 1908 what her greatest work was, Kellogg said, “The opening of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris to women architects.”
Hall of Records interior. Photographer: Matt Minor, 2018, NYC Municipal Archives.
Upon returning to New York, Kellogg got a job with the prolific architect John R. Thomas. With him, she worked on many large projects including the Hall of Records pictured here. She designed the interior stairs for that project as well as supervising its construction. When Thomas died in 1901, Kellogg started her own firm.
Her early projects included a 16-story tower in San Francisco, a railroad station, an office building, and several renovations. Kellogg was fortunate to earn as a client the American News Company, a publisher with 150 new and old buildings all over the country. “I don’t care so much for small pieces of architectural work,” Kellogg said. “I only do big things.”
Kellogg personally supervised construction on all her projects within a 200-mile radius of New York. One journalist accompanying her to a jobsite described her as exhibiting “a surprising and reckless disregard for the laws of gravitation, or wading through piles of dirt and debris.” Another wrote, “She knows every detail of her profession, construction, the theory and practical knowledge of plumbing, heating, electricity, and ventilation. …[H]er superintendent of construction says, ‘She isn’t afraid of anything,’ and he added, ‘She is the most thorough man I ever met in architectural work.’”
Illustration from Pearson’s Magazine, February 1911: 227.
Kellogg received press coverage all over the country owing to her successes in a male-dominated profession. Many of the articles mentioned the salary she earned. From her first job at five dollars per week, Kellogg progressed to earning $10,000 a year in 1914—about $283,000 in today’s dollars.
When the US entered World War I in 1917, the military soon realized that it needed to provide a place in military camps to accommodate all the women visiting service men. It contracted the YWCA to create and run fifty “hostess houses” at thirty-seven military camps. The large “houses” each provided boarding rooms for women, a social space for loved ones to meet, and a cafeteria. Many of these hostess houses were designed by female architects. Kellogg designed nine, adapting the design of the Camp Gordon house in Atlanta to preserve three large oak trees. Julia Morgan, the first woman to be admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts in architecture, also designed a number of YWCA hostess houses.
Kellogg died in 1918 at age 47 without realizing her ambition to build “a better and different skyscraper than has ever been built.”
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Sources
“‘Accident’ Made her an Architect; Now the Profession Nets Miss Fay Kellogg $8,000 a Year,” Detroit News, February 29, 1912: 4.
“A Strict Boss,” Wilmington Evening Journal, June 8, 1908: 5.
Cynthia Brandimarte, “Women on the Home Front: Hostess Houses during World War I,” Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter 2008): 201-222.
Fayetteville News, May 9, 1914: 13.
“Miss Fay Kellogg,” Pittsfield Berkshire County Eagle, July 05, 1905: 11.
Mrs. Henry P. Davison, “Women at War,” Colville Examiner, November 9, 1918: 2.
Nixola Greeley Smith, “Pioneer Woman Architect Tells How She Won Success in Her Trade,” Des Moines Daily News, July 9, 1914: 5.
“Woman Invades Field of Modern Architecture,” New York Times, November 17, 1907: 43.