Ida F. McCain, Residential Designer, Builder, and Developer

Architect Ida F. McCain (born c. 1885) designed multiple homes and dominated the San Francisco bungalow market in the late 1910s and early 1920s. This success followed prolific design work in Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. By 1919, McCain was reported to have designed a thousand homes.

McCain made no secret of her financial success, telling a reporter, “There’s money in it for the right women and when I say money I don’t mean the bread-and-water wage many women work for when they are capable of earning more.” The article noted that “McCain’s ability as architect is recognized to such an extent that the company which now has her services paid her more than they paid the man who preceded her.”

In 1900, McCain lived in Fort Collins, Colorado with her mother and stepfather (who was a carpenter) and two brothers, one of whom was a plumber. From about 1899 to 1903, she attended the State Agricultural College in Fort Collins. McCain enrolled in the new Architecture program; her participation, with another female student, in the shop-work class in carpentry and joinery made the newspaper.

Upon graduating, McCain worked in Los Angeles for two different firms. She moved with her mother and a brother who was a contractor to Portland, Oregon, in 1909 and continued designing residential projects. “I think I like making apartment house plans best, as it is interesting to work out the points of economy, which are not so essential when drawing plans for residences,” she told a reporter in 1912.

Emil Long house in Westwood Park, 1919.

In 1915, McCain moved to San Francisco with her family. San Francisco was undergoing a period of rapid development, and McCain had the opportunity to design many bungalows for new developments. By 1920, McCain was designing homes for Baldwin and Howell, a developer creating new residential communities. That company promoted the new neighborhood Westwood Park with an ad that featured a caricature of and testimonial from McCain. A note at the bottom of the advertisement read, “We’re glad to say that ‘Westwood Park’ owes much to Miss McCain’s skill and tireless energy, for… she has designed and constructed some of the most notable bungalows in San Francisco.”

F. E. Gilbert House in Westwood Park, 1919.

In the early 1920s, McCain left the S. A. Born Building Company where she had worked for six years to become self-employed. She then worked as an architect, builder, developer, and realtor. McCain collaborated and sometimes developed homes with different contractors, including at times her contractor-brother. Much of her work was concentrated on the San Francisco peninsula where she helped create new neighborhoods. She developed apartment buildings as well as single-family homes.

McCain described her design process as starting from the inside “where the real home will be.” After establishing the inside design, “it’s an easy matter to make the exterior attractive and artistic.” Although she had forty houses under construction in 1919, she apparently worked alone. “I have to employ a good draftsman soon—and it’s not going to be a man,” McCain told an interviewer. “I am going to employ a young woman because she pays more attention to detail.” She went on to say, “Architecture is a profession for which women are peculiarly fitted if they have good heads….If they stick on the job they can more than successfully compete with men in a very remunerative field.”

A journalist described McCain as “delightfully feminine” for someone associated with “a man’s work.” McCain took the opportunity to tell the interviewer—and her readers—that “If a woman likes architecture and is adapted for it, there isn’t any reason why she shouldn’t take it up and be successful.”

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Sources:

“The Woman Worker: No Bread and Water Wage for Architect,” Fresno Herald, June 17, 1919: 9.

U.S. Census, 1900 and 1910 (Ancestry.com)

Fay King, “Woman Among City’s Successful Architects,” The Oregon Daily Journal, March 19, 1912: 12.

“Why I Chose Westwood Park for my Bungalows” (advertisement), San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 1920: 6.

“Register of the Officers and Students of the State Agricultural College,” Fort Collins, Colorado, 1900.

“C. A. C. Notes,” The Fort Collins Express and The Fort Collins Review, Sep 11, 1901: 9.

“Building Contracts,” The San Francisco Journal and Daily Journal of Commerce, April 28, 1922: 15.

“Building Contracts,” The San Francisco Journal and Daily Journal of Commerce, February 16, 1922: 13.

Ida F. McCain, “The Home Builder: Four Recent Bungalows in Westwood Park,” The Building Review, December 1919: 111-112.

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