Enid Yandell

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/three-girls-in-a-flat-by-enid-yandell-and-laura-...

It’s the story of three young women architects involved with preparing the World’s Columbian Exposition, aka the Chicago World’s Fair, in 1893 – and specifically with preparing the Woman’s Building, a really interesting project designed, managed and implemented entirely by women, showcasing women’s achievements in the arts in a way that seems strangely twenty-first century, at a time when only two states in the USA allowed women to vote. (New Zealand and Colorado both extended the vote to women in 1893.)

The book is probably mostly by Laura Hayes, who as well as being a trainee architect was the secretary of Bertha Palmer, the Chicago socialite who was the prime mover behind the initiative to have a Woman’s Building in the first place (at least her name is given as the copyright holder). Enid Yandell, who gets top billing on the title page, became a very well-known sculptor whose career started with the Chicago Exposition. The third credited author, Jean Loughborough, was another architect who designed the Arkansas building for the Fair.

The book is a brief and warm account of apartment life for young professional women in a city which was just getting used to that concept. It is beautifully illustrated – eight illustrators are credited and I suspect that the authors contributed some pictures as well; there’s something to look at on every page. What got me was the tremendous sense of optimism; America and the world as a whole were opening up, and the three young women are convinced that the future will be better than the past. You can get it for free off the internet.… (meer)