Landmark Florida Architecture

Much of the architecture featured in this set is the work of Ida Annah Ryan and Isabel Roberts, who formed a partnership in Orlando in about 1920.

Ida Annah Ryan (1873-1950) was the first woman in the USA to receive a master's degree in architecture (from MIT). She was among the pioneering women architects in the United States and in Florida.

Read more about Ida Annah Ryan at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Annah_Ryan

Isabel Roberts (1871-1955) had previously worked in the Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright. Long overlooked by architectural historians, Isabel was an architect in her own right, both in Mr. Wright's office and thereafter.

Isabel D. Roberts was born in Mexico, Missouri. She was the younger of two daughters of James H. and Mary Roberts. James was a mechanic and inventor born in New York. Mary, a homemaker and a native of Prince Edward Island. They had been married in 1867 in New York state. They lived for a time in Missouri, where Roberts and her sister Charlotte were both born. Leaving Missouri, the Roberts family moved several more times, including to Providence, Rhode Island. They eventually settled in South Bend, Indiana, where James H. Roberts became Deputy Director of Inspections for the State of Indiana. They were active members of the First Presbyterian Church of South Bend and social and civic groups through which they became friends of Laura Caskey Bowsher (later, DeRhodes). This friendship eventually led to Roberts’ introducing Laura to Frank Lloyd Wright and Laura’s commissioning from Wright's studio the K. C. DeRhodes House.

Isabel Roberts spent three years in New York City, studying architecture in the atelier Masqueray-Chambers, the first atelier (or studio) in the United States established to teach the practice of architecture along the French lines of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was established by Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, who is best remembered as the architect of the St. Louis Exposition and of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Roberts found herself among an impressive roster of future architects who studied with Masqueray. Starting in 1899, Masqueray made a concerted effort to include women among his architectural students and even opened a second atelier especially for women students at 37-40 West 22nd Street in New York. As was said at the time, "...he has unbounded faith in women's ability to succeed in architecture...provided they go about it seriously."

Isabel Roberts was among Wright’s first employees when he left Louis Sullivan and opened his own studio in Oak Park, Illinois. They were part of a movement that Marion Mahony called The Chicago Group and has come to be known as the Prairie School of architects.

The Chicago Group espoused Louis Sullivan's credo, "form follows function," which became evident in their work, hallmarks of which include: a close relationship of the building to the landscape, an openness and informality of the floor plans, large overhangs on the exterior structure, a use of horizontal bands and clustered windows and a restrained use of conventionalized forms from nature as a harmonious ornamental theme throughout each building. Also evident were the influences of Japanese architecture and the English Arts and Crafts movement.

A clear understanding of Isabel Robert’s role in the Oak Park Studio comes from Wright’s son John Lloyd Wright who relates the contributions made by Miss Roberts and other figures of the Prairie School. John Lloyd Wright relates that William Drummond, Francis Barry Byrne, Walter Burley Griffin, Albert McArthur, Marion Mahony, Isabel Roberts and George Willis were the draftsmen. He further clarifies that they made up the five men and two women who each were making valuable contributions to Prairie style architecture for which Wright became famous.

Isabel Roberts has been described by Wright scholars as Frank Lloyd Wright’s secretary, bookkeeper or office manager. While Roberts may have fulfilled these functions, she also took an active role in the lively and creative design atmosphere of the Studio. This role has been downplayed or missed by many who have written about her.

For example, Wright biographer Brendan Gill calls Roberts “the office manager of the Oak Park studio”. Similarly, Diane Maddex labels “Isabel Roberts, the office manager of his studio in neighboring Oak Park.” David A. Hanks manages only the term “secretary” to describe Roberts’ role. So, too, biographer Meryle Secrest defines Roberts’ roll simply as: “Isabel Roberts, secretary”. H. Allen Brooks skirts the issue with “Isabel Roberts, on the staff.”

They cannot be faulted too much, having swallowed the red herring presented by Frank Lloyd Wright himself when writing about the Oak Park “…studio adjoining my home, where the work I had then to do enabled me to take in several draughtsmen and a faithful secretary, Isabel Roberts…“ Following Wright’s lead, Grant Carpenter Manson had defined her, mistakenly, thus: “Isabel Roberts, for whom one of the most celebrated Prairie Houses was built in River Forest in 1908, was not an architect; she was bookkeeper and general factotum at The Studio…”

Giving a bit more credit, Melenaie Birk says Roberts was “a bookkeeper and assisted with drafting in Wright’s Oak Park studio”. So, too, is Roxanne Williamson with this: “Isabel Roberts managed the office but also seems to have done some drafting.” Henry Russell Hitchcock and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. got nearer the truth when they named “Isabel Roberts, one of the drafters in his office”. Notably, Thomas A. Heinz presents a valid summary of Isabel Roberts’ work while in Wright’s employ, saying, “She was an architect in her own right and her talent and position in Wright’s Oak Park office has been largely ignored and underestimated.”

Isabel Roberts also produced original designs for the leaded art glass windows in the Prairie houses. Among the light-screens she is known to have designed are those in the Harry P. Sutton House in McCook, Nebraska. Isabel Roberts is remembered by her extended family, with whom I have visited, as an architect.

While she was in Wright’s employ, Roberts and her mother commissioned a house from Wright's studio, which is today known today as the Isabel Roberts House, in the Chicago suburb of River Forest. Some scholars contend that it is based on an unbuilt commission for Joshua Melson in Mason City, Iowa[20]. The Isabel Roberts House was designed by Isabel Roberts, per her own statement, even though it has always been attributed to Wright, out of whose studio it emerged. The house was designed for Isabel and Mary Roberts to share, which they did for a decade before leaving Illinois. Also according to her own statement, while in Wright's employ, Roberts designed the K. C. DeRhodes House in South Bend, Indiana, for her South Bend friend, Laura Caskey Bowsher DeRhodes.

After Wright went off to Europe with Mamah Borthwick Cheney in 1909, Isabel Roberts was among the remaining Oak Park Studio employees working to complete Wright's unfinished and future commissions. Wright had arranged for architect Hermann V. von Holst to oversee the work; he , with Studio employees Isabel Roberts and John Van Bergen, as well as Marion Mahoney and Walter Burley Griffin (who were by this time no longer employees but working under contract), brought what work they could to completion--much of it modified to Marion's designs. Then Roberts literally locked the doors of the Oak Park Studio, thus closing the productive Oak Park years of Wright’s career.

Isabel Roberts and her family, as well as the family of Prairie school architect William Eugene Drummond, were visitors to St. Cloud, Florida, as early as the winter of 1915. Roberts and her mother Mary moved to St. Cloud a decade after the Isabel Roberts House was completed. Mary Roberts was in failing health due to the lingering effects of influenza. Roberts’s sister Charlotte and her husband John B. Somerville were by that time established residents of St. Cloud. Mary Roberts died in Florida, in 1920.

Once in Florida, Isabel Roberts went into architectural practice with Ida Annah Ryan, who was the first woman in the United States to earn a masters degree in architecture, from MIT. As the firm of “Ryan and Roberts”, they were among no more than a dozen architecture firms active in Orlando in the 1920s. Their business is listed under the heading “Architects” as "Ryan and Roberts" in the 1926 and in the 1927 Orlando City Directories, at 240 S. Orange St. and the Kenilworth Terrace address. One of only 10 architectural firms listed in 1926, the others including: Frank L. Bodine, Fred E. Field, David Hyer, Murry S. King, George E. Krug, Howard M. Reynolds, Frederick H. Trimble and Percy P. Turner. And one of 12 firms so listed in Orlando in 1927, which included Maurice E. Kressly.

Soon after arriving in Florida, Roberts attempted to become a member of the Florida chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Letters of recommendation from John Van Bergen, Hermann V. von Holst and Frank Lloyd Wright which accompanied her application make it unmistakably clear that these men who had been her colleagues in Chicago considered Roberts to be an architect. Even so, Roberts was not admitted to the AIA. Nonetheless, throughout the 1920s, the architectural firm of Ryan and Roberts created landmark buildings in Central Florida, some of which still stand, today:

You can read more about Isabel Roberts at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Roberts

Photos of Isabel Roberts' Florida work that appear in this collection, as well as my original research about Isabel Roberts, are included in the film described in this event, part of the 50th anniversary at the Guggenheim:

"In collaboration with The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation will present "The Architecture of Writing: Wright, Women, and Narrative" on June 10, 2009. Participants Carol Gilligan and Gwendolyn Wright with Sarah Williams Goldhagen as moderator, discuss how the architecture of writing shapes the narratives about women architects. To launch the discussion, the program premiers a BWAF-produced 15-minute film, “A Girl Is A Fellow Here”: 100 Women Architects in the Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright, that explores an unknown legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. At a time when few architectural firms would hire women, Frank Lloyd Wright unhesitatingly employed women, giving them both training and opportunity to practice. Ultimately, over 100 women architects and designers worked with Wright, many of them going on to remarkable careers of their own. One of the Taliesin Apprentices of 1947, Lois Gottlieb, will be honored at the beginning of the program."

For more about the film:
www.bwaf.org/support-film.html

Some of my photos, along with an article I wrote about Isabel Roberts and Ida Annah Ryan, are in the Summer 2009 issue of "Reflections" which is the quarterly journal published by the Orange County Regional History Center.

If you live in Central Florida and know of work by Isabel Roberts and Ida Annah Ryan that is not pictured here, please email me and let me know about it.

Stylistically, many of these buildings exhibit Prairie School elements as well as simplified mid-1920s Mediterranean Revival themes not unlike those of Irving Gill in California, which were locally dubbed "Spaniflora".

For comparison purposes other landmark buildings in Central Florida are included in this set, among them, a number of works by DeLand architect Medwin Peek.

Other buildings are from different locations in Florida.