Suffragism and Housing Design

Abstract

Spaces are often tied to either implicit or explicit gender biases. For centuries, in both the Netherland’s and the USA's history, the public realm was envisioned as a space for men while the domestic spaces of a home were predominantly associated with women. However, at the turn of the twentieth century, this dichotomy began to be challenged. Due to the demands of World War I, women started occupying a more tangible portion of the paid workforce. Additionally, with the rights won through the women’s suffrage movement they became a relevant patron of architecture as well, in their fight for living independently from their families or male partners. With the rise of this so-called pink-collar working class, a much needed housing typology finally began to develop. It provided living arrangements for independent women without the strict rules and regulations of a “Young Women’s Home” , an all women housing arrangement where symbolic house mothers raised their daughters in the traditional ideas of women and domesticity. From Hull House, founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1889, to Het Nieuwe Huis, built in 1928 Amsterdam, the Netherlands, there is a clear exchange of profound thoughts from influential women, joined together over the fight for global peace and women’s rights of that period. Feminist activists such as Aletta H. Jacobs, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Jane Addams all contributed largely to the American-Dutch intellectual pipeline that made many of these changes come to fruition, working tirelessly to promote women's evolving role in society.

Dwelling design was a place defined by its relationship to domesticity, but these spaces had to adapt to the paradigm shift brought about in the early 1900s. This research paper investigates the effect these women and their activism had on the USA’s and the Netherlands’ dwelling architecture, focusing on the impact that single women had on the spatial and programmatic aspects of housing. This study is based on compiled plans and images of both Hull House and Het Nieuwe Huis, literary research from Dutch and USA newspapers, and letters sent between Jacobs, Gilman, and Addams. Additionally, through contemporary architectural and gender theorists, these ideological drivers and how they manifest themselves in the architecture become clear. This discussion also identifies how designing for women altered the traditional expectations of women in the public realm and the way they were viewed in society. It solidifies social values into the built environment and in order to design consciously and considerately, for contemporary as well as future use, it’s crucial to understand how societal movements have altered design in the past so that one can predict the requirements of the next generation of architecture and the people who inhabit it.