Harriet Morrison Irwin
Harriet Morrison Irwin (1828 Mecklenburg County, North Carolina – 1897 Charlotte, North Carolina) was an American architect and the first American woman to patent an architectural design.[1] In August 24, 1869, she submitted a patent, categorized under the Improvement in the Construction of Houses, for a residential design proposal of a hexagonal house.[2]
Life
She was home schooled by her father, Reverend Robert Hall Morrison, president of Davidson College and attended the Salem Female Academy in North Carolina.[3] She married James P. Irwin; they moved to Charlotte, North Carolina; they had nine children.[4] They lived at 912 West Fifth Street.[5]
She wrote for the magazine, The Land We Love, edited Daniel Harvey Hill. Irwin also wrote the book, The Hermit of Petraea, in 1871, in which she discussed her ideas of health, the outdoors and how hexagonal living could promote physical well-being.
She studied Bindon Blood Stoney, and John Ruskin On August 24, 1869, she patented her design of a six sided house.[6]
She is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.[7]
Sources
- Kathy Neill Herran, They Married Confederate Officers, Warren Publishing, April 1998, ISBN 978-1-886057-24-1
References
- ↑ Sarah Allaback (2008). The first American women architects. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03321-6.
- ↑ "Patent Images". pdfpiw.uspto.gov. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
- ↑ Heisner, Beverly (22 September 1999). "Grove Art Online". Oxford Art Online. Grove Art Online. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
- ↑ http://www2.arch.uiuc.edu/organizations/wia/archtspotl/irwinharriet.html
- ↑ Don Schick (2006). Charlotte: Then & Now. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7385-4228-7.
- ↑ Madeleine B. Stern (1994). We the women: career firsts of nineteenth-century America. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-9223-9.
- ↑ http://www.ncmuseumofhistory.org/collateral/articles/f06.house.that.harriet.built.pdf
External links
- Herran, Kathy Neill. "Irwin, Harriet Morrison." NCpedia. 1 Jan 2006. NC LIVE, Web. 20 Sep 2011.
- http://www.kathyherran.com/frame.html
- "Trying to fit a square peg in a round hole", Atkins Library Special Collections
- "Irwinhouse", Feminine ingenuity: women and invention in America, Anne L. Macdonald, Random House Digital, Inc., 1994, ISBN 978-0-345-38314-3