Verna Cook Salomonsky

Verna Cook Salomonsky
Born	Verna Cook (1888-10-19)October 19, 1888 Spokane, Washington
Died	1978
Nationality	American
Alma mater	École Spéciale d'Architecture
Occupation	Architect
Spouse(s)	Edgar Salomonsky Warren Butler Shipway

Verna Cook Salomonsky (1890–1978) was a pioneering early 20th-century American architect known for her work as a solo practitioner in residential communities outside of New York in the 1920s and 1930s and later as an author on architectural design and history.^[1] Following the death of her first husband, Edgar Salomonsky, in 1929, she maintained her own practice and designed several hundred homes, including a model home for the New York World's Fair in 1939. In the 1960s, she and her second husband, Warren Butler Shipway, wrote several books on Mexican domestic architecture and design.^[1][2]

Education

Verna Cook was born in Spokane, Washington on October 19, 1888 to Harlan J. Cook, a local businessman, and Mara S. Taylor Cook.^[1][3] Cook attended Spokane High school, graduating in 1907, and then enrolled for a year at Miss Gilman's private school in Boston, Massachusetts.^[4] She subsequently traveled to Paris and enrolled at the École Spéciale d'Architecture for two years, leaving in October 1911.^[2] Upon her return to the United States, she began two and a half years of coursework at Columbia University's School of Architecture from 1912 to 1913.^[4]

Career

In 1913, Cook began working as a junior drafter in the office of William Knighton in Salem, Oregon.^[4] After leaving Knighton's offices in 1915, she returned to New York City in 1916 to begin a three-year long position as a general drafter and designer in the office of Dwight James Baum.^[4] During this three-year period, she also worked for three months in 1917 for Howard Major and six months in 1918 for Electus D. Litchfield.^[4]

By 1920, Cook had married fellow Columbia graduate Edgar Salomonsky and the couple established their own firm, focusing largely on residential architecture.^[5][6] Their offices were located at 368 Lexington Avenue until 1921, when they moved to 331 Madison Avenue; in the late 1920s they were located at 40 East 49th Street and by 1936, they were located at 424 Madison Avenue.^[7][8]

During the late 1920s, Cook also created the designs for several lines of "boudoir accessories" including hand mirrors, combs, and hairbrushes.^[9][10]

After Edgar's death in 1929, Verna continued to practice alone, completing hundreds of residences in the New York metropolitan area and later in California.^[11] Her work primarily relied on traditional vocabularies, including Georgian, Colonial and English style houses as well as eclectic combinations of various styles.^[1] In 1936, House and Garden selected her firm to design the magazine's first "Ideal House," which was exhibited as a model home in the "Town of Tomorrow" at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.^[12] By 1937, she was a registered architect in New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania and had served as a critic for one semester at the School of Design for Women in Philadelphia, PA and for three years at the New York School of Interior Decoration in New York City.^[4] Cook was also among the first female members of the Architectural League of New York; the League opened its membership to women in 1934, and in 1936, Cook was the only female architect admitted.^[13]

In 1939, Cook married her second husband, Warren Butler Shipway, a 1921 graduate of Princeton University with a degree in civil engineering.^[14][15] The couple moved to California in 1947, and travel to Mexico in the 1950s inspired five books on historic and contemporary Mexican residential architecture, cowritten by Cook and her husband.^[16]

Cook died in 1978 in La Jolla, California, and her archives today reside at the University of California at San Diego.^[17]

Built works

• House in Fieldston (1920), Riverdale, New York City, with Edgar Salomonsky^[18]
• House of M.F. Griffin (1928), Scarsdale, N.Y., with Edgar Salomonsky^[19]
• House of Raymond Faith (1928), Bryn Mawr Park, N.Y., with Edgar Salomonsky^[20]
• House of Edgar Salomonsky, Scarsdale, N.Y., with Edgar Salomonsky^[21]
• C.E. Wells House (1929), Woodland Park, Summit, New Jersey, with Edgar Salomonsky^[6]
• House of Clifford Walsh (1933), Scarsdale, N.Y.^[22]
• C. Ernest Greenwood House (1933), Scarsdale, N.Y.^[23]
• Tauton Road House (1934), Scarsdale, N.Y.^[24]
• Lockwood and Axtell Drive House (1934), Scarsdale, N.Y.^[25]
• House in Berkley, Scarsdale (1933)^[26]
• Marjorie Warren House (1933) North Castle, NY^[27]
• Dr. Herman Prange House (1934), Scarsdale, NY^[28]
• House of C.G. Novotny (1935), Scarsdale, NY^[29]
• Residence of A.W. Brown (1936), Scarsdale, NY^[30]
• Pugliese House (1938), Harrison, NY^[31]

Awards

• First Prize, "Brick House." Small House Competition, 1921.^[32]
• Second prize, Small House Competition sponsored by The House Beautiful, 1927.^[16]
• House and Garden magazine's first "Ideal House," 1936.^[16]

Publications

• Salomonsky, Verna Cook. "The Year-Round Service Porch, Half Indoors, Half Out, a Constant Delight." (Illustrations by,the Author.)The Washington Post, Apr 07, 1924.
• Shipway, Verna Cook. Masterpieces of furniture, in photographs and measured drawings. New York: Dover Publications, 1953.
• Shipway, Verna Cook and Warren Shipway, The Mexican House, Old & New. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1960.
• Shipway, Verna Cook and Warren Shipway, Mexican interiors. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1962.
• Shipway, Verna Cook and Warren Shipway, Mexican homes of today. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1964.
• Shipway, Verna Cook and Warren Shipway, Decorative design in Mexican homes. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1966.
• Shipway, Verna Cook and Warren Shipway, Houses of Mexico; origins and traditions. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Company, 1970.

References and sources