Elisabeth Scott

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Royal Shakespeare Theatre, seen from across the river Avon. Sept 2006, before extensive re-building work begins.
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, seen from across the river Avon. Sept 2006, before extensive re-building work begins.

Elisabeth Whitworth Scott, 20 September 1898 to 19 June 1972, was a British architect.

Contents

[edit] Career

Elisabeth Scott was the designer of the 1932 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford, England, the first important public building in Britain to be designed by a female architect [1] . It is designed in a modern rather than a Classical or other historical style.[2] In 1924, when Scott entered practice, there were no prominent women architects and her selection for the project to rebuild the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre after it was destroyed by fire was only through her success (against seventy-one other entries) in an international competition. Her achievement, and her decision to employ where possible women architects to assist her on the Stratford design, was instrumental in opening up the profession to women.

Two months before the new Memorial Theatre was to open it had been agreed that Sir Edward Elgar, then 75, would be its new musical director. But after visiting the building he was furiously angry with that "awful female", announcing that her design was "so unspeakably ugly and wrong" that he would have nothing further to do with it. However, while the consensus of opinion was hostile, the modernist Architectural Review in its June 1932 issue, pp 219-223, pronounced her building a triumph - a review quoted at length by Sally Beauman in The RSC: A History of Ten Decades).

[edit] Feminism

Scott was a quiet, but practical, feminist and she worked through the Fawcett Society to promote the acceptance of women in the professions.

[edit] Family

Scott was the great-niece of the renowned architect George Gilbert Scott. In 1936 she married George Richards.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Pringle p 29
  2. ^ Stamp, Gavin. Risky Buildings The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Twentieth Century Society. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.

[edit] Sources

  • Beauman, Sally : The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades, Oxford University Press (1983) ISBN 0192122096
  • Bury, David : Elgar Society Journal: Elgar and the Awful Female, Elgar Editions ISBN 0953708268
  • Pringle, Marian : The Theatres of Stratford-upon-Avon 1875 – 1992: An Architectural History, Stratford upon Avon Society (1994) ISBN 0-9514178-1-9
  • Stamp, Gavin (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 
  • (2007) Who Was Who. London: A&C Black. 
  • "Trial flight for the Swan of Avon", Guardian, 1932-03-27. Retrieved on 2007-02-28. 
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