Bertha Yerex Whitman’s 50 Years in Architecture

Bertha Louise Yerex Whitman (c. 1892 – 1984) attended normal school, but after a brief teaching career she decided she would prefer to be an architect. In 1914, when she went to the University of Michigan to apply to the architecture school, she was not made welcome. She later recounted that the professor she spoke with—who would later become the school’s dean—told her, “’Well, you’re a woman, and the law says we have to take you; but I’ll tell you right now we don’t want you.’”

Yerex was not deterred. She enrolled in the architecture school and did well. She was a founding member of “The T-Square,” a group of female architecture and engineering students that later became a national professional organization.  In 1917, when many of her classmates left to serve in World War I, Yerex joined Dodge Motor Co. as a drafter.  After the war she returned to the university and became the only woman to graduate from the School of Architecture in the class of 1920.

In January 1921, Yerex married Lloyd Whitman. They moved to the Chicago area where Yerex Whitman found a position with Perkins, Fellows and Hamilton Architects. Her husband was a mechanical dentist in a laboratory. In 1924, the couple had a daughter. In the fall of 1925, while pregnant with her second child, Yerex Whitman passed the Illinois State Board exam to earn her architectural license

Yerex Whitman was an active member of the Chicago Women’s Drafting Club, rising to its presidency in 1929. Juliet Peddle was among the other T-Square alumnae active in the organization. The club had been created in response to Elisabeth Martini’s 1921 newspaper announcement: “Only Girl Architect Lonely: Wanted—to meet all of the women architects in Chicago to form a club.”

During the Great Depression, many building and construction projects dried up. Yerex Whitman’s husband’s business also foundered, and he abandoned the family. To support herself and her two young children, Yerex Whitman got a job as a social worker with the City of Chicago in 1934. After working for the City for about three years, Yerex Whitman became responsible for an office of designers and drafters that remodeled state offices.

Yerex Whitman designed houses on the side while employed by the city and state, completing designs for more than fifty houses between 1928 and 1967. She prided herself on the efficiency of the designs. One house earned a “Better Homes” contest in 1931. She also worked with other architects on churches, houses, and schools. After retiring from her state job in the 1950s, she continued to design houses. Most were built in the suburbs of Chicago, although her last one was built in Montana in 1974.

1717 Harrison Street, Evanston, Illinois. Courtesy of Erica Ruggiero.

Yerex Whitman also found the time to travel around the world five times and write a travel book about some of her experiences. She died in a nursing home in 1984 at age 92.

Please subscribe to The Architectress.

Sources:

Sarah Allaback, The First American Women Architects. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.

2715 Payne Street, Evanston, Illinois. Courtesy of Erica Ruggiero.

“Bertha Yerex Whitman, Architect for 50 Years,” Chicago Tribune, November 4, 1984: 71.

Martha Keller, “Pioneering Architect Built Respect,” The Ann Arbor News, September 20, 1981: B3.

“The Women’s Architectural Club,” Pencil Points, November 1929: 802.

“College of Architecture News,” Michigan Architect and Engineer, April 1926: 15.

University of Michigan Senior Class Yearbook, Michiganensian, 1917: 454 and 1920: 201.

“Architect Whitman Showing Men How to Design,” Miami Herald, March 18, 1973: 44K.

“Bertha Yerex Whitman,” Landmarks Illinois.

U.S. Census, 1900, 1910, and 1920. Ancestry.com