Gannon & Hands Solved the Tenement Problem

Mary Nevan Gannon (1867 – 1932) and Alice J. Hands (1874 – 1971) met in 1892 while studying architecture at the newly opened New York School of Applied Design for Women. “These friends work together most harmoniously, consult on every important enterprise, and are so inseparable that they are indiscriminately called Gannon or Hand by their fellow-students,” an 1896 profile of the architects read.

After completing their technical training in 1894, the women worked for two of their former instructors. These architects were in turn employed by a large firm so the work of entering design competitions was, Hands wrote, “left almost wholly to us. So largely were our suggestions accepted and so much of the work was practically ours that we decided after three out of the five plans we had worked out were awarded prizes, that instead of spending our time and energy working for others without receiving outside credit we would constitute ourselves a firm for independent work.” Gannon & Hands opened in New York in 1894 and was likely the first female architectural partnership in the U.S.

While the partners’ work included planning a hospital in San Francisco (a commission awarded in a design competition) and designing homes in the suburbs, Catskill Mountains, and New Jersey coast, the firm distinguished itself in its design of tenement buildings. Months of research and lived experience informed Gannon and Hands’ successful model tenement designs. The women were variously reported to have lived in tenement rooms for one or four years to familiarize themselves with the building type. Gannon wrote, “the conditions were unsanitary, the ventilation poor, and …there were no bathing privileges;” lighting was inadequate and “privacy was impossible.”

The New York Times reported that the two architects also “visited every tenement house of note for good or evil conditions from Harlem to the lower parts of the city and Brooklyn. They become members of the Tenth Ward Tenement-House Investigation Committee, and from 6 o’clock at night until 12, all through the Winter, they visited tenement houses in their district.” Gannon described the state of tenement houses as “a reproach to the humanitarianism of this enlightened century. It is a crying evil and one which should be redressed without delay.”

By all accounts, the two architects succeeded in addressing these shortcomings. Reformist journalist Jacob Riis, famous for exposing and protesting against the dismal living conditions in New York’s tenements and slums in his book How the Other Half Lives and other publications, was won over. Riis said of Gannon & Hands’ work, “‘They have, in my judgment, solved the question of building a decent tenement on a twenty-five-foot [by one-hundred-foot] lot. . . . I am content to know that the question I judged incapable of solution has been solved.’” Another journalist wrote of the team’s design, “The often perplexing questions of interior conveniences—light, so desirable in tenements of the cheaper class, cleanliness and hygienic conditions—are solved in many ingenious ways; and the entire plan is remarkable for its completeness of detail, its economy of space, and the homeliness and comforts realized at a minimum rental.”

The architects noted that their tenement design would benefit both the tenants and the building owners. “Our plans have been approved not only by philanthropists, but by practical businessmen,” Gannon said. When ground was broken for the firm’s first tenement at 71st Street and Avenue A in February 1898, the New York Times reported that a male Chicago broker had commissioned designs for fifteen more tenement buildings from the firm. A female client commissioned a design for a women’s hotel to provide living accommodations for “women of reduced means,” including students.

Because of their professional successes and the novelty of their gender and youth, the “girl architects” received national attention in the press. They often used this coverage to make a statement about equal compensation for equal work. “A point upon which we are determined is that we will not cut rates,” Gannon told one publication. “The cheapening in all the departments of work undertaken by women is deplorable….From the beginning we decided that if our work was equally meritorious with that of men in the same line, we should demand equal recognition, although we were women. The best architects encourage and praise our efforts. It is from the insignificant and unsuccessful ones that the opposition comes; those who are not sure of themselves criticise us and are afraid of us as competitors.”

Gannon moved to Spokane, Washington with her husband and young son in 1900, bringing the partnership to an end. Hands married five years later and is known to have designed her family’s Cincinattus, New York home and a building for the business her husband managed. She also received a patent in 1935 for a collapsible pushcart.

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Sources:

From the Flagstaff Sun-Democrat, April 29, 1897 via “Alice J. Hands.”

Sarah Allaback, “Mary Nevan Gannon” and “Alice J. Hands,” Pioneering Women of American Architecture (Eds. Mary McLeod and Victoria Rosner), Beverly Willis Architectural Foundation.

Joseph Dana Miller, “Women as Architects,” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly 50 (June 1900): 199-203.

Alice J. Hands, “She Plans New Buildings,” in Grace H. Dodge et al, What Women can Earn: Occupations of Women and their Compensation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1899): 94 - 97.

Alice Severance, “Talks by Successful Women IX.—Miss Gannon and Miss Hands on Architecture.” Godey’s Magazine 83 (September 1896): 314–16.

Image: San Francisco Call, May 24, 1896, 27.

Frances E. Willard, Occupations for Women (Cooper Union, N.Y: Success Company, 1897): 366–70. 

“Model Hotel for Women,” New York Times, May 12, 1895.

“Female Architects,” The Herald (Los Angeles), 14 Dec. 1894. 

“Successful Women Architects: Sixteen Tenements to be Built on Their Plans—Also a Women’s Hotel,” New York Times, February 25, 1895: 8.

“A Model Building,” The Copper Country Evening News (Calumet, Mich.), 26 Oct. 1897.

“The Art Schools of New York,” San Francisco Call, May 24, 1896: 27.