“For the Record” introduced the Manhattan Building Plans Project in 2018, and provided an update in April 2020, In the Details. This important work is continuing. With funding from the New York State Library Conservation and Preservation Program, two more staff have joined the project. To date, the team has completed processing almost 40,000 plans.
Surrogate’s Court, 31 Chambers Street, central atrium and staircase, 2018. Photographer: Matt Minor. NYC Municipal Archives.
Recently, they inventoried an 1897 alteration plan submitted to the Department of Buildings by architect A. F. Leicht for a hotel located at 270 South Street. According to the application, a “Mrs. Emma Meyer” owned the building; notable because a woman-owned business property at that time was very unusual.
This led to wondering about a related topic, women architects. Reviewing the inventory of the processed plans revealed exactly one building with a woman, Marie Frommer, listed as the primary architect on a 1946 building alteration plan. One goal of the processing project is to provide multiple ways to research the collection: location, date, and architect’s name. The inventory also includes the landmark status of the building, quantity and condition of the plans, as well as remarks, e.g. exceptional façade elevation, or, “woman-owned.”
Continuing the search for woman architects led to an excellent resource, Architects in Practice: New York City, 1900-1940, compiled by James Ward for the Committee for the Preservation of Architectural Records in 1989. The preface to the volume included a list of architects with “feminine” names. It’s a short list. Of the more than 5,000 names in the directory, Ward identified a total of twenty women.
Would the Archives collection provide information about any of the women architects on this list? The answer is yes, and the journey led unexpectedly close to home, and the fascinating story of Fay Kellogg.
Since 1984, the Municipal Archives has been headquartered in the Surrogate’s Court building at 31 Chambers Street. Designed by John Rochester Thomas in 1899, the Beaux-Arts-influenced structure has long been celebrated as one of the most beautiful public buildings in the city.
First floor rotunda, detail, Hall of Records, 31 Chambers Street, architect John R. Thomas, 1897. NYC Municipal Archives.
What is less well-known is that Thomas’ staff included a young woman architect named Fay Kellogg who is credited with the design for the grand staircase that is one of the highlights of the central atrium.
Piecing together the history of a person often requires many sources. In the case of Kellogg, it is fortunate that she was written about during her career. Those contemporaneous reports supplement the archival records needed to tell her story. Born in 1871 in Milton, Pennsylvania, Kellogg attended Columbian University, now known as George Washington University, in Washington D.C. to pursue a career in medicine. In a 1907 article in the New York Times entitled, “Woman Invades Field of Modern Architecture: Remarkable success of Miss Kellogg in profession exclusively followed by men scores triumph for her sex” Kellogg explained that her father had concluded that the study of medicine was long and difficult and urged her to give it up. Instead he offered to pay for her to study architectural drawing and mathematics with a German tutor followed by a year of study at the Pratt Institute.
After her initial training, Brooklyn architect Rudolph L. Daus hired Kellogg in 1892 to help design the 13th Regiment Armory and the Monastery of the Precious Blood. She also spent a year with the firm of Carrere & Hastings before heading to Paris. While working at the atelier of Marcel de Monclos she applied for admittance to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Had she been successful, she would have been the first woman at the Ecole. And it was through her petitions to the French government that the Ecole began accepting women students in 1898.
295 MacDonough Street, Brooklyn, 1940. Tax Photograph Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.
After Paris, Kellogg returned to Brooklyn. According to census records, she resided with her family at 295 MacDonough Street. The 1910 federal census records her occupation as ‘artist,’ but the 1915 King County census (available in the Municipal Archives) more accurately lists her profession as ‘architect.’
A 1915 story in Pearson's Magazine, “Two Women Who Do Things,” by Kate V. St. Maur, described how Kellogg joined the architectural firm of John R. Thomas, designer of 31 Chambers Street, and stated “… the great staircase in that building was designed by her.” The 1907 Times story related how Thomas had also approved her plan for a sculptural program made up of four early Dutch governors placed in niches that would “represent them looking out on the Greater City, with its skyscrapers, subways and other features of its wonderful growth.” Sadly, Thomas died before construction began and the work was turned over to the Tammany Hall architects Horgan & Slattery who scrapped her plans for the sculptures.
After Thomas’ death in 1901, Kellogg went into business for herself, with an office at the newly-built 30 Union Square. She started off quickly with a commission to renovate and construct seven buildings for the American News Company in Manhattan on Park Place. They soon placed her in charge of all their work in New York City.
Throughout her career, Kellogg designed hundreds of buildings, cottages, suburban railway stations, and helped to design the Woman’s Memorial Hospital (now the Interfaith Medical Center) in Brooklyn. During World War I, Kellogg was one of three female architects, including Julia Morgan and Katherine Budd, who were contracted to design “hostess houses” for military camps in the South.
“Woman’s Place Is, if You Insist, in the Home; but Who’s Going to Fuss About It If She Wants to Earn $10,000 Or So, a Year, Somewhere Else?” Illustrated article, New York Herald, December 17, 1916.
In addition to her work, Kellogg strongly supported women’s suffrage and the fight for the equal rights of women in the workplace. In 1909, she was included in a delegation of “self-supporting” or professional women, the only architect included in the group, invited to sit on the stage at Carnagie Hall to hear British Suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst. She often spoke eloquently about the role of women in architecture. For example, in a 1911 interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer, Kellogg was asked if there were any specific fields suitable for women in architecture, to which she replied, “I don’t think a woman architect ought to be satisfied with small pieces, but launch out into business buildings. That is where money and name are made. I don’t approve of a well-equipped woman creeping along; let her leap ahead as men do. All she needs is courage.”
In 1907, Kellogg purchased property in Greenlawn, Town of Huntington, Long Island. She built a home there, as well as the town post office. On April 21, 2021, Town of Huntington officials unveiled a historical marker honoring Kellogg, describing her as “…the foremost woman architect of the early twentieth century.”
Fay Kellogg, death certificate, no. 14819 of 1918, Brooklyn. NYC Municipal Archives.
Kellogg became ill in Atlanta, Georgia in the spring of 1918 while supervising the construction of hostess houses at Camp Gordon. She died in July 1918 at her home in Brooklyn, aged 47. According to her death certificate (on file at the Municipal Archives), the cause of death was asthenia from a sarcoma of the spine, and not the flu epidemic, as has been more recently reported The certificate also recorded her occupation: architect.
Kellogg was not always credited for her work. It is not clear how many other women worked in architectural firms without being acknowledged. By presenting this information, it is hoped that Kellogg’s contribution to the glorious 31 Chambers building will be recognized.