Katharine Cotheal Budd, Architect, Artist, and Writer
Katharine Cotheal Budd (1860 – 1951) began studying architecture when opportunities for women to do so were very limited in both universities and offices. She was born in Clinton, Iowa, and went to New York where she studied privately with Columbia University’s architecture school founder William R. Ware. She studied architecture in Paris in the studio of a teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, in Rome, and at the New York Art Students League. Her office training included running the architecture office of another Columbia professor for a year. She studied art as well.
Budd’s architectural work included houses for prominent New Yorkers and others, the Ann Brown School in Yonkers, the Brooklyn Women’s Club, and numerous community houses. During World War I, the YWCA hired Budd and other female architects (Marcia Mead, Fay Kellogg, and Julia Morgan) to design hostels for female family members to stay and dine in while visiting men living on military bases. Budd designed seventy-two of the ninety-six “Hostess Houses” in operation in 1919 at a construction cost of two million dollars (about $42 million today). She designed three main types of Hostess Houses and was credited with making each feel “homey” rather than institutional. Her work on the Hostess Houses took her to Indiana, New Jersey, Illinois, South Dakota, and Michigan.
Budd studied the architecture in the regions she visited. In 1921, she said she most enjoyed designing school houses, especially in the country to give rural children better advantages. She also was interested in farm women, who she believed were not happy because their homes lacked basic conveniences like a water pump in the kitchen. “Comfortable, convenient houses will make the mother and children content in the country,” the newspaper wrote of Budd’s beliefs.
Budd made multiple trips to Europe, studying architecture, creating artwork, and researching in-depth articles for architectural magazines. Her articles were often illustrated with her own sketches. Her 1906 article on architecture in Saragossa, Spain likely informed her design for the buildings she designed in the Mediterranean Revival style. In her article on kitchens, she compared the efficiency of American kitchen (not favorably) to kitchens in Italy, France, and Germany, and closely examined other elements that made kitchens work well. This no doubt served her well in her architecture work.
When Budd applied for membership in the American Institute of Architects in 1924, she had been practicing architecture for 30 years. During the course of her career, she was licensed in seven states. Reflecting on her career later, she said she had designed hundreds of buildings.
In 1924, Budd began designing a large house Mediterranean Revival house in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida for citrus magnate and land promoter William Howey. This house was listed on the National Register for Historic Places in 1983. The Harry C. Duncan House, the other Florida house Budd designed—this one in the Colonial Revival style, in Tavares—was listed on the National Register in 1997.
Budd lived in Florida from about 1926 to 1928. While she probably went there because of these two large commissions, she might have stayed owing to her health. She described herself as being “very ill” during this time. Soon after she recovered in 1928, she left for Europe. In 1942, a newspaper profile reported Budd closed her office and moved to owing to the Depression, “painting and studying in various European countries and finally settling in Paris, where she became interested in lithography and etching.” She won two prizes for her etchings at the Salon des Artistes Francais.
In 1940, Budd moved to Tucson. She volunteered for the Girl Scouts, teaching arts and crafts to both scouts and instructors, and continued to create art. “Miss Budd, although 83 years old and confined to a wheelchair because of arthritis, is still active in making sketches of desert life,” a newspaper reported in 1942 while announcing the pending opening of an exhibition of Budd’s etchings.
Budd died in Tucson in 1951 at age 90.
Sources:
“Membership file: Katharine Cotheal Budd,” AIA Historical Directory of American Architects.
“Art Exhibit to Have Opening Here Monday,” Tucson Daily Citizen, Mar 21, 1942: 13.
“Tucson Artist to be Speaker at Pen Women’s Open Meet,” Tucson Daily Citizen, October 31, 1944: 4.
“Harry C. Duncan House,” National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, 1997.
“Howey House,” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 1977.
Katharine C. Budd, “Saragossa,” Architectural Record, May 1906: 327-343.
Katharine C. Budd, “The Kitchen and its Dependent Services,” Architectural Record, June, 1908: 463-476.
Estelle Frances Ward, “Bringing Home to the Army Camps,” House Beautiful, February 1919, 76-77, 100.
“Miss Budd to Have Exhibit,” Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), March 22, 1942: 21.
“Open Doors in Business: Miss Budd, Architect,” The North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts), May 20, 1921: 6.
Sarah Allaback, The First American Women Architects (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008): 57-58.
Death certificate, Ancestry.com