Looking back on architectural history, you could be forgiven for thinking that women were an invention of the 1950s, alongside spandex and power steering - but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Big names like Le Corbusier, Mies, Wright, and Kahn often had equally inspired female peers, but the rigid structure of society meant that their contributions tended to be overlooked. Sophia Hayden Born in 1869 in Santiago, Chile to a Chilean father and American mother, Sophia Hayden Benett was the first woman to receive an architecture degree from MIT when she graduated in 1890. The degree, however, did not guarantee work; after searching fruitlessly, Hayden Benett resigned to accepting a job teaching technical drawing in a Boston High School. In 1891, Hayden came across an announcement calling on women architects to submit designs for the Woman’s Building, which would form part of Daniel Burnham’s gargantuan World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Hayden’s proposal, based upon her college thesis, was for a three-story building in the Italian Renaissance style. Hayden's design won the first prize out of the field of thirteen entries. Only twenty-one at the time, Hayden received one-thousand dollars for her design, which was a tenth of what many men received for theirs.
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