| If you remember, last week we started to discuss architecture in the residential United States. |
| Today we'll narrow in on that, focusing on a few architects |
| who made some significant changes to the 19th century residential architecture. |
| It's worth mentioning that designers at the time likely faced a lot of scrutiny |
| both from their peers and from the public at large. |
| A bit of discouragement probably came along with that. |
| Many thought that designs should not necessarily be utilitarian, but a status symbol |
| or way to show off your sensibilities. |
| Designing was looked upon like more of an art than a science. |
| There's actually a quote I have here, |
| from an issue of a journal called The American Architect and Building News, from 1876. |
| Here, I'll read it to you, and I want you to keep it in mind as we progress with the lesson. |
| They said that "the planning of houses isn't architecture at all"! |
| And now we arrive at Harriet Morrison Irwin. |
| Irwin was born in North Carolina, |
| when there weren't a lot of architects hailing from the southern United States. |
| Born in 1828, she also entered a field where very few women dared walk. |
| A pretty exceptional case, Irwin had not received any formal education to be an architect. |
| She actually studied literature. |
| Jane? Would you like to add something? |
| Yeah, so, she just had crazy awesome architecture instincts or something? |
| Essentially, yes. |
| She had spent several years writing, |
| but found she had a good mind for engineering and math, |
| and ended up studying it a lot on her own time. |
| We actually studied one of her favorite authors in the field of architecture, |
| the British critic John Ruskin. |
| Do you remember what Ruskin's main theme was? |
| Oh, I think It was something about nature? |
| Like, he thought that people who lived close to nature would have better health, both mental and physical. |
| Exactly right. |
| So, Harriet really enjoyed Ruskin's writing, |
| and those ideas bloomed into a few of her own. |
| At that point, her push into architecture was fairly small, |
| but caused a bit of an interested stir. |
| Her first contribution was a house designed with a hexagonal shape. |
| Six sides, instead of the standard four. |
| She thought the important thing about the house was that the rooms were arranged around a central chimney. |
| This central chimney, as you can imagine, provided heat in the winter to each of the six rooms equally. |
| It also had an interesting flip for the summer. |
| Harriet made sure there were windows on every outside wall, |
| to provide each room with natural lighting and a view of the outdoors. |
| These doubled in the summer, when one could open the windows and doors, |
| combined with the chimney floo and produce a noticeable breeze. |
| So she used Ruskin's nature thing, |
| and made an open little house that could feel open and fresh. |
| Correct! |
| Likewise, having a fireplace in every room would have meant possible smoke or 'dirty air' in the rooms, |
| and a lot of cleaning. |
| With the open windows and airflow sweeping in toward the center, |
| all the dust or smoke would be pulled up and out of the house. |
| Her house also didn't have a main entrance, or many hallways. |
| There were a few doors spread around the outside walls, providing easy access to the outdoors. |
| Another advantage to this kind of layout is the cleaning style. |
| Think about it, |
| what part of a room is the hardest to clean with a broom? |
| Probably the edges of a room. |
| Under a desk, or in a corner. |
| Exactly. |
| Now, I have a strong feeling that, due to the times, biographers weren't as kind as they could have been. |
| I feel they may have downplayed her designs, |
| and didn't talk about how truly ingenious and creative this idea had been. |
| If Margaret had first designed this same house in today's times, |
| architects would be praising her name from the rooftops. |
| Well, that may be a bit exaggerated. |
| Anyway, three of Irwin's hexagon designed houses were created during her lifetime. |
| In 1869, Irwin received a patent for architectural design, |
| the first woman in the history of the United States to do so. |
| That kind of remarkable achievement speaks for itself, if you ask me. |