Cincinnati Preservation Association was pleased to host the 2019 Fall Forum on Friday, October 25, 2019.  Author and architectural historian Gabrielle Esperdy presented a talk on the overlooked women who helped shape the course of modern architecture as a practice and a profession.  The talk highlighted the work of pioneering modern architect Natalie de Blois designer of Cincinnati’s Terrace Plaza and many of Skidmore, Owens & Merrill’s most iconic mid-20^th century buildings.

Gabrielle Esperdy is associate professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her work looks at the intersection of architecture, consumerism and modernism in urban and suburban landscapes in the United States paying particularly attention to the ways social, economic and political issues shape the built environment. Her books include Modernizing Main Street, published in 2008, and the forthcoming American Autopia, examining how the automobile influenced architectural and urban discourse after World War II. She has also written extensively on the experience of women in the American architecture profession from the 1950s to the present.

Esperdy’s work has appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Perspecta, and Architectural Design, among others. She is a columnist for Places and editor of SAH Archipedia, an online resource on the history of the built environment published by the Society of Architectural Historians and the University of Virginia Press..