Expanding agency: Ethel Power, House Beautiful, and the Writing of the History of American Architecture

Ethel Power was one of the first students to enroll at the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the only all-female degree program in architecture ever offered in the United States; she would later serve on its Board of Trustees.1 In 1922, she became the editor of House Beautiful, a position she resigned at the end of 1933, although she continued to contribute articles in 1934 and 1935. Established in Chicago in 1896, House Beautiful was the earliest consumer‑oriented publication in the United States to focus exclusively on architecture, interior decoration, and design. It also covered gardening. Left out, however, were fashion, fiction, and the housekeeping advice included in the magazines targeted at women, such as Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping, that were already well established by this point and, with circulations that could surpass one million, ten times what House Beautiful achieved under Power’s stewardship, were the country’s most widely read periodicals.