The Background
The following excerpt is from an article published in The Atlanta Journal in 1913, featuring an interview with Henrietta C. Dozier (1872-1947), the first female architect in Atlanta and the Southeastern United States.
What a difference 12 years makes. Compared to the first profile of Dozier in 1901, this article about Atlanta businesswomen is downright respectful — the male reporter even puts “weaker” in quotations when mentioning the ‘”weaker” sex.’ Progress!
Women’s suffrage was still 7 years away, but as the article notes, Atlanta women were increasingly making inroads into male-dominated professions, including photography, real estate, medicine, dentistry, and, of course, architecture.
“… it is only a question of time when there will be no typically masculine projects,” the writer opines.
As always, Dozier was characteristically forthright about the difficulties of her profession (“It is a hard life…”) and didn’t hesitate to recognize her role as a pioneer for other women — “It was left for me to open a pathway where other women shall reap success.”
This article is one of just a few that list some of Dozier’s notable projects during her time in Atlanta, making it a particularly valuable research source.
Article Excerpt:
“The old bubble that the north is a better field of business for a woman than the south has been decidedly polted.”
So speaks the woman architect of Atlanta. Another one backs her up, a woman photographer joins her voice in the assertion, a female real estate agent drives it into one ear and tries to sell you a lot through the other, a half a dozen doctors and dentists of the “weaker” sex agree with them.
They do not have to put it into words. It can be seen with half an eye. It is visible in the crowded ante-rooms of the women doctors, in the beautiful pictures in the photographer’s windows, in the scores of blue prints overflowing the architect’s table.
When a woman succeeds in a woman’s work it is not surprising. When a man succeeds in a woman’s work the world is not astonished. But the woman winning success in a business which is properly a man’s, is another matter.
It will not be long, however, before it will be impossible for women to gain distinction in a masculine project, for it is only a question of time when there will be no typically masculine projects. The women are making them their own.
SOUTHERN BUSINESS WOMEN.
In the north and east, even in the west, women have been breaking into business for the last quarter of a century. In the south, in Atlanta, a real business woman is still enough of a rarity to win the public gaze and incidentally the public patronage.
Business women who have tried their hand in Atlanta have tried their hand in the north as well, will tell you that there is no place like the south. Their slogan is an adaptation of Horace Greely‘s “Young girls, come south”.
There is Miss Henrietta Dozier, the woman architect who has had all the business she could handle for the last eleven years. She has had offices in the Peters building for eleven years, she has been in the south but eleven years, she has been successful eleven years.
Not that Miss Dozier is advising any girl to go to work.
“It is a hard life,” she says, “and if I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want her to do architectural or any other kind of work.”
Atlanta should feel proud of Miss Dozier. She is a graduate of the Girls’ High school and has made her name one of the foremost in American architectural circles.
Dozier graduated from Boston Tech, a full-fledged architect. She had accomplished the dream of her girlhood, fulfilled the ambition which was born in her when she used to build houses of A B C blocks and which clung to her all through her High school days.
First, she tried architecture in Boston, and the result is the very reason she likes Atlanta better. South she came, was in Jacksonville for eighteen months, and then reached Atlanta, where she was in the office of Walter T. Downing for another eighteen months.
PIONEER FOR WOMEN.
Eleven years ago she went into business for herself. At the time there was not another woman practicing architecture south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Miss Dozier was the pioneer who blazed the way.
“It was left for me to open a pathway where other women shall reap success,” said Miss Dozier.
Her own success has been far-reaching. Among the best work she has done is on the Nelson Hall school for girls, soon to be erected on Peachtree road; a shooting box for Mrs. Ernest Lorillard in Buford, S.C.; the Southern Ruralist building in Atlanta, an office building at Buchanan [sic], W. Va.; churches in Jacksonville, Fitzgerald, Gainesville, Barnesville; and numerous residences, among them Mr. Blackmar‘s in Columbus, Ga., Bishop Nelson‘s and Arnold Broyles‘ in Atlanta, Dr. W.A. Turner‘s in Newnan.1
References
- Greene, Ward S. “Atlanta Women Win Success In Business”. The Atlanta Journal, June 15, 1913, Women’s Section, p. 3. ↩︎