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Sophia Hayden Bennett is recognized as one of the earliest women to engage in professional architecture. She is famous for her major work, the Woman’s Building of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. As the first woman to receive a degree in architecture, Sophia played an important role in the profession at a time when the practice of architecture was male-dominated.
Sophia Hayden was born in Santiago, Chile, on October 17, 1868, to Elezena Fernandez Hayden (Peruvian mother), and Henry Hayden (American father). She had her basic education at the Hillside School and her secondary education at West Roxbury High School. She was the first woman to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1890.
After school, Sophia had a hard time finding a job in architecture. In 1891, she accepted an offer as a technical drawing teacher at a school in Boston. In the same year, women architects were invited to participate in the design competition for the Pavilion of Women in the World Exhibition in Chicago from 1892 to 1893, also called the World's Columbian Exposition. The competition was a celebration of the fourth centenary of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus. Sophia joined the competition and won with the design of the famous Woman’s Building. She was only twenty-one years old.
Sophia was awarded a gold medal on completion of the building. Nonetheless, she received a fee of 3 to 10 times less than that of the male architects who designed Exposition buildings. Male critics of the Woman’s Building remarked that the structure had such “feminine” attributes as daintiness and grace. Sophia was absent at the building’s dedication ceremony in 1892. Her absence set off rumours about her and her work. While some attributed her absence to mental exhaustion, others held it up as proof that women were not suited for architecture.
The Woman’s Building was demolished after the Exposition closed in 1893. Therefore, no structural record of Sophia’s career exists. Following the Exposition, she moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, and took an active role in local women’s societies.
In 1900, Sophia Hayden got married to the artist William Blackstone Bennett. Sophia Hayden fought for the aesthetic integrity of her work since the Woman’s building was the only design of hers that was ever built. She died on February 3, 1953, in Winthrop, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Sophia Hayden Bennett remains a source of inspiration for many upcoming female architects around the world.
REFERENCE
Information from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sophia-Hayden, https://pioneeringwomen.bwaf.org/sophia-gregoria-hayden-bennett/ and https://architectuul.com/architect/sophia-hayden-bennett was used in this story
