Book celebrates landmark legacies of local women in design

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This article was published 09/03/2024 (572 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1938, a recent alum of the University of Manitoba walked into the offices of a Winnipeg architecture firm looking to put their degree to good use. The graduate had earned top marks, but the interviewer searched for fault elsewhere.

Despite having won the university’s gold medal at her convocation, Joan Harland was told she would make a fine secretary.

Harland had other plans.

One year after finishing her studies, Harland became the university’s first instructor of interior decorating. By 1953, she was, somewhat ironically, named the chairman of the interior design department she helped build, and by 1958, Harland was promoted to full professor.

Harland’s career is one of dozens illuminated by Manitoba Women in Design, a new book by Marieke Gruwel documenting the contributions of women to the province’s built environment.

Meticulously researched over the course of a decade, the book is the latest publication from the Winnipeg Architecture Foundation, a non-profit organization for which Gruwel serves as executive director.

Gruwel’s intention for the book — which is split into five chapters: architecture, interior design, planning, landscape architecture and engineering — was not to create an all-encompassing history, but to open the door to further research and scholarship.

“I really wanted this book to be seen as part of the beginning,” says Gruwel, 31, who took over the foundation’s executive directorship from Susan Algie in the fall.

“This is not an exhaustive documentation. These are the women I found and wrote about. I don’t want anyone to see this and think there’s not more work to do.”

Gruwel’s fascination with this particular slice of Manitoban history began during her undergraduate studies in art history at the University of Winnipeg, during which she encountered two women who, along with Harland, served as a springboard for her eventual book. Both were named Elizabeth.

The first was Elizabeth Pilcher, an Australian architect and planner who was hired in 1958 by the firm Green Blankstein Russell and Associates (GBR). During her early years working at the foundation, Gruwel found a photograph of Pilcher being greeted at the airport by firm principal Cecil Blankstein upon her arrival in Winnipeg. Who was this woman? Gruwel wondered.

As it turned out, Pilcher was a subject more than befitting of Gruwel’s initial awe. During the Second World War, she was recruited by the U.S. government as a draftsman, working on top-secret drawings, including maps of possible invasion routes. After the war, she studied at Harvard University under the modernist architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus.

By December 1958, Pilcher was on a tarmac in Winnipeg. A few months later, she was working with GBR on the since-demolished Winnipeg International Airport.

The second Elizabeth to catch Gruwel’s eye was Elizabeth Lord, who in 1944 was the first woman to become a registered architect in Manitoba, running her own firm after working in drafting for both GBR and Moody and Moore, another prominent midcentury firm.

Interviewed by the Winnipeg Tribune in 1971, Lord was asked whether she’d had a successful career.

“Yes and no,” she answered. “Financially, no. But professional, yes. I set a landmark for women architects in Manitoba.”

Lord and Pilcher formed the spine of Gruwel’s master’s thesis, The Elizabeths: Gender, Modernism and Winnipeg’s Built Environment, 1945-1975, completed at Concordia University. After wrapping that up, Gruwel dug deeper, continuing to search for more stories of women serving foundational roles in local history.

The architecture foundation’s fonds, local newspaper archives, the U of M’s Brown and Gold yearbooks, and assistance from the University of Winnipeg’s oral history centre were significant sources for Gruwel of both material and subject matter. She also contacted dozens of family members and former colleagues, adding a journalistic element to the project.

Those connections often led to the inclusion of original drafts and drawings; visuals which showcase the diverse range of skills employed by Gruwel’s subjects, who were rarely limited to a single discipline or field of design.

While Gruwel’s book serves as an entry point of understanding for significant projects including the old airport and city hall — whose interior was designed by Margaret Stinson — it also showcases the ways in which these women helped build the educational programs responsible for training practitioners in their fields, especially interior design, landscape architecture and city planning.

Another of Gruwel’s most engaging entries tells the story of Mary Rosalind Robertson, who in the 1960s was hired as Winnipeg’s chief city planner, the first woman to hold the title. Robertson, whose married name was Forbes, worked alongside Margaret Chivers on the 1966 Development Plan for Greater Winnipeg.

Other women discussed include landscape architects Cynthia Cohlmeyer, the first woman to graduate with a degree in that field in Canada and a leading hand in the redevelopment of The Forks; and Laurie Lamb Wagner, whose design work includes more than 100 playgrounds and the master plan for the redesign of the north end of Vimy Ridge Memorial Park.

While Gruwel did the writing, she says the book was made possible through the research assistance of many colleagues.

“I couldn’t have done it alone,” Gruwel says.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com