Yes, The Atlantic Cities got the date wrong when it chose to celebrate Bethune's birthday last week. But that doesn't mean we can't honor the first American woman known to have worked as a professional architect (born on July 21, 1856).
Louise Blanchard Bethune was the first female associate of the American Institute of Architects. She and her husband shared a practice in Buffalo, New York.
Bethune’s best-known project was Buffalo’s Hotel Lafayette (1902). She turned down a chance to enter the design competition for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in protest over the low rates offered to women designers.
Buffalo remembers the first woman of architecture with the soon-to-open “Bethune Lofts,” in the renovated Buffalo Meter Building. The building was formerly known as “Bethune Hall” when it housed the SUNY Buffalo department of art, from 1970 to the early 1990s.
“[A]nyone who admired Bethune and what she represented should be pleased to see the only city in which she practiced architecture bringing her legacy and her name back to life a century after death,” Mark Byrnes writes.
Read the full story: Happy 157th Birthday to America's First Female Architect
Buffalo Hospital to Become 80 Housing Units
The former Millard Fillmore Gates Circle hospital building is part of a larger development aimed at bringing affordable housing to western New York.
Buffalo Residents Push Back on Proposed Cap Park
State and local officials say the $1 billion project will heal neighborhoods divided by the Kensington Expressway, but community members say the proposed plan will exacerbate already poor air quality in the area.
Buffalo's New NFL Stadium Paid for by $850 Million in Public Funding
The total estimated cost of the NFL stadium planned for the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, south of Buffalo, New York, comes to $1.4 billion—including $850 million in public funding.
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
California plans to bury El Niño’s downpour
If the state plays its cards right, it may be able to store a billion acre-feet of El Niño’s water in aquifers.
Desperate measures: Advocates weigh draining Lake Powell to fill Colorado River
Draining the reservoir could reduce evaporation losses by a couple hundred thousand acre-feet.
In Texas, data centers are swallowing promised parkland
Residents who moved to Taylor, Texas for a rural community now have to contend with three data centers in their backyard.
How a Chicago-sized wind farm beat the odds and powered on
The project spanned five presidential administrations and a standoff with a U.S. military base.
MTA gives itself 30 days to transform pit into basketball court
The site has been under construction since 2022; the city originally estimated it would finish the court in 2024.
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
City of Rosemead
Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
City of Cambridge
Montrose County
The Pocatello Development Authority