Louise Bethune (July 21, 1856 – December 18, 1913), born Jennie Louise Blanchard in Waterloo, New York, was the first American woman known to have worked as a professional architect. The Blanchard family moved to Buffalo, New York when Louise was a child. She graduated from the Buffalo High School in 1874 and was planning on going to architecture school at Cornell. Instead, in 1876, she took a job working as a draftsman in the office of Richard A. Waite and F.W. Caulkings who were well know architects in Buffalo, New York. At the time it was more common to learn architecture while working for a firm rather than in a classroom. She worked for this company for 5 years and with this company she received a “man’s” education and proved that she could hold her own in this masculine profession. In 1881, she opened an independent office partnered with Robert Bethune in Buffalo, earning herself the tile as the nation's first professional woman architect. Two months later, she wed Robert Bethune and they had a son, Charles, in 1883.
Louise Blanchard Bethune designed mostly industrial and public buildings, she disliked working on private home projects since they were not a challenge for her and they paid very little money. She is known for designing some of Buffalo’s best hotels and schools. Sadly, a lot of her buildings have been destroyed to make room for newer, updated buildings. One of her most well known designs and her masterpiece was the neoclassical Lafayette Hotel that she was commissioned $1 million to design, completed in 1904. It had 256 rooms and was one of the top 15 finest hotels in the U.S. in its time. Her and her husband worked together to designed a music store in Buffalo that was one of the first buildings in the United States to be built using a steel frame and poured concrete slabs. Two other buildings that she designed that are still standing today are the Iroquois Door Plant Company warehouse and the large Chandler Street Complex for the Buffalo Weaving Company.
Louise Blanchard Bethune was elected a member of the Western Association of Architects in 1885, of which she later served a term as vice president. She was the first female associate of the American Institute of Architects (A.I.A.) in 1888 and she became a fellow to the institute in 1889. In 1891 she refused to compete in a design competition for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago because of the difference in how men and women were being treated. The men were paid $10,000 to design other buildings for the fair while the women only got $1,000 for their designs. She retired in 1908 and died in 1913 at the age of 57. In 1910, between the time she retired and the time she died, there were 50 women working in an architecture profession.