This SAHGB - IHR seminar will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, N304 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU).
28 Brabazon House Dining Room With Residents
This seminar will tell the story of campaigns to house a new generation of working women, the specialised design of the buildings and the women whose lives were changed by this architectural movement. After 1900, the rapid rise of women working as clerks, secretaries or typists, in London and other cities, created an urgent need for affordable and respectable accommodation. Building on models of elegant Victorian ladies’ residential chambers and the vast working men’s lodging houses, a new type of single working women’s hostel emerged.
The handsome, if occasionally austere, façades blended into the vibrant Edwardian streetscape. However, architectural plans, literary descriptions and historic photographs reveal distinctive interiors. The hostels featured efficiently planned tiny private spaces alongside generous communal dining and sitting rooms, as well as libraries, music rooms and bicycle stores, and occasionally a swimming pool and ballroom.
Emphatically not charitable or municipal affairs, these were business-minded enterprises, established and advocated by other Edwardian women. In turn, these little-known buildings supported, enabled and empowered a new generation of intrepid working women. This seminar will focus on the architecture, the residents and previously untapped sources that help to tell this story.
Speaker Bio
Emily Gee IHBC FSA has worked in historic building conservation at English Heritage, Historic England and the Church of England. She also teaches architectural history at New York University in London. Emily studied at Smith College, the University of Virginia and the Architectural Association. She is on the Blue Plaques Panel and a Trustee of Oxford Preservation Trust.
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