Women Writing Architecture 1700-1900

AGLAIA VON ENDERES (née Podhaysky, 1834-83) was an Austrian writer and an advocate for women’s rights and education. She served as secretary of the Viennese Women’s Employment Association founded in 1866. For the Vienna World fair in 1873 she was a member of the commission and contributed to the pavilion of women’s work and published about it first in the newspaper Wiener Abendpost and later as a book. She was also entrusted with the official report on women’s work at the Paris World Exhibition (1878). DID YOU KNOW that Enderes also published books on flora and fauna and was known for her precise descriptive skills, for example in her illustrated volume Frühlingsblumen (Spring Flowers, 1883)? WITHOUT HER reporting, women’s work at world exhibitions would have remained even more marginal within public discourse. Her writings contributed to making women’s labour visible as a distinct field of production and expertise. WHAT IF Enderes’s writings were recognized as expert knowledge on exhibition design? Her accounts document spatial hierarchies, visitor movement, and the choreography of display, revealing how women’s work was positioned, framed, and circulated within the exhibition architecture. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, educator, theorist SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN A. v. Enderes, Die österreichische Special-Ausstellung der Frauenarbeiten auf der Wiener Weltausstellung (Wien: Verlag des k. k. Oesterr. Museum für Kunst und Industrie, 1874) Image: Additionelle Ausstellung, Vienna World Fair, 1873 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

SARAH STICKNEY ELLIS (1799-1872) was an English writer and educator. From a Quaker family, she took up writing for money when her family’s fortunes dwindled. After marrying a Congregational minister and missionary, she turned to moral topics, writing numerous successful conduct-books, works on female education, aesthetics, cookery, and household management as well as travel accounts. In 1844, she opened a non-denominational girls’ school, which included both academic and practical instruction. Through her writing, she had a large influence on shaping the role of women in the Victorian middle-class family and domestic life. DID YOU KNOW that her first publications included a series of drawings as well as an anti-slavery tale? WITHOUT HER, British Victorian women would have had less access to practical instruction and learning, but they would have perhaps also been less confined to the domestic sphere. WHAT IF her writings had been read as architectural documentation and evidence? The human labour behind the emerging middle-class household with its social conventions and class and gender roles, which still shape spaces today, could have been understood better. SPATIAL AGENCY theorist, educator, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN S. Ellis, Summer and Winter in the Pyrenees (London: Fisher, 1841) S. Ellis, The Beautiful in Nature and Art (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1866) Image: Théodore Roussel, The Window Cleaner, Chelsea, 1888-89 (©️ The Trustees of the British Museum) WoWA Editor: @annehultzsch This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

SARAH STICKNEY ELLIS (1799-1872) was an English writer and educator. From a Quaker family, she took up writing for money when her family’s fortunes dwindled. After marrying a Congregational minister and missionary, she turned to moral topics, writing numerous successful conduct-books, works on female education, aesthetics, cookery, and household management as well as travel accounts. In 1844, she opened a non-denominational girls’ school, which included both academic and practical instruction. Through her writing, she had a large influence on shaping the role of women in the Victorian middle-class family and domestic life. DID YOU KNOW that her first publications included a series of drawings as well as an anti-slavery tale? WITHOUT HER, British Victorian women would have had less access to practical instruction and learning, but they would have perhaps also been less confined to the domestic sphere. WHAT IF her writings were read as architectural documentation and evidence? A link could emerge between gendered concepts of the domestic, domestic architecture, and national identity formation. SPATIAL AGENCY theorist, educator, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN S. Ellis, The Women of England, Their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits (London: Fisher, 1839) S. Ellis, The Beautiful in Nature and Art (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1866) Image: Chateau de Pau, France, by Sarah Ellis, 1841 (University of California, Hathi Trust) WoWA Editor: @annehultzsch This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

MARIANNE EHRMANN (née Brentano, 1755-95) was one of the first German novelists, as well as a journalist and editor. Raised near Zurich, and having worked as actress and servant, she later settled in Stuttgart where she wrote and hosted a literary salon. DID YOU KNOW that, in her first book, Philosophie eines Weibs (Philosophy of a Woman, 1784), Ehrmann openly accused men of double standards, blaming them for any female weakness or character faults resulting from a lack of education? WITHOUT HER, women in late 18th-century southern Germany and Switzerland would have had less access to the branch of enlightenment thought that also considered gender discrimination and misogyny. WHAT IF her demands for female education, including as space and homemakers, would have been listened to by men? The role of housekeeping and homemaking as spatial practice might have gained more relevance, establishing a closer link between (mostly male) architectural practitioners and (mostly female) homemakers. SPATIAL AGENCY theorist, critic, educator SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN M. Ehrmann, Philosophie eines Weibs (n.p., 1784) M. Ehrmann, Amaliens Erholungsstunden: Teutschlands Töchtern geweiht (Stuttgart: Mäntler, 1790; Tübingen: Cotta, 1791-92) Image: David Herrliberger, Kurze Beschreibung der gottesdienstlichen Gebräuche, 1751, (Zentralbibliothek Zürich) WoWA Editor: @annehultzsch This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

SUSANNA EGER (née Born, 1640-1713) was a German author and cook from Leipzig, married to a merchant. Widowed early as a mother of four, she worked as a cook for affluent families in Leipzig. Having collected over 900 recipes, she published her cookbook which appeared in at least five editions in the 18th century and has since been reissued in the 1980s and as recently as 2005. She was one of the first to use precise measurements and ingredients, as well as specifying how dining tables should be laid out. DID YOU KNOW that her cookbook was translated into Swedish as En nödig och nyttig hushålds och kokbok (1733) becoming one of the first examples of the genre in this language? WITHOUT HER, dining arrangements of the middle and upper classes in 18th-century German States would have likely been less coherently arranged, both in terms of food cooked and consumed as well as of how it was spatially displayed. WHAT IF we had recognized her table plans and instructions as spatial practice with architectural ramifications earlier? We could have analysed how shifting dining practices, including the serving and preparation of foods by domestic workers, influenced the layout and furnishing of domestic architecture. SPATIAL AGENCY designer, educator Image: Leipziger Koch-Buch, 1706 (Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen) WoWA Editor: @annehultzsch This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

AMELIA ANN BLANFORD EDWARDS (1831-92) was an English author of novels, translations, press articles, and scholarly works as well as an Egyptologist, archaeologist, and illustrator. She travelled extensively across Europe, including in 1872 to the Dolomites – as one of the first tourists – and in 1873 to Egypt, Syria, and Constantinople. This trip led her to embark on studies in Egyptology. Combining her personal experiences with rigorous historical studies, she became a contributing member to orientalist conferences and scholarly works, including the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and was invited to lecture in the United States where she addressed some 100,000 people in total. DID YOU KNOW that she campaigned for British-sponsored excavations in the Nile delta, which then led to important finds being brought to the British Museum? WITHOUT HER, Anglophone Egyptology would have lacked one of its most outspoken campaigners and scholars, pushing for archaeological excavations and research, but also for the removal of artifacts from their original location. WHAT IF we had read her texts as architectural histories? History works on ancient architecture would have had to cite the work of a woman more prominently. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, historian, educator, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN A.B. Edwards, Sights and Stories: Some Account of a Holiday Tour Through the North of Belgium (London: Emily Faithful & Co, 1862) A.B. Edwards, Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauhnitz, 1873) Image: A.B. Edwards, Temple of Luxor, 1877 (New York Public Library, Hathi Trust) WoWA Editor: @annehultzsch This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

LUCIE DOMEIER (née Esther Gad, ca. 1770–1836) was an author, translator, and advocate for women’s and Jewish rights. She wrote travelogues, essays, reviews, and poetry, and translated works from French and English. Publishing under multiple names, her authorship reflects marriage, migration, and conversion from Judaism to Protestantism. Born into a Jewish merchant family in Breslau, she moved to Berlin and participated in the salons of Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin Varnhagen von Ense. She later settled in London. DID YOU KNOW that she published a critical book on Germaine de Staël’s De l’Allemagne (1813), first anonymously in English (many readers assumed the author was a man) and later in German under her own name, thereby explicitly inscribing herself into contemporary intellectual discourse? WITHOUT HER, we would lack a situated account of the material conditions of travel and mobility around 1800, attentive to movement, affect, and social hierarchy. WHAT IF Domeier’s travel writings were read as documentation of early modern infrastructure? Her observations reveal how built environments structured circulation and physical proximity – making visible the spatial organization of bodies from a gendered and class perspective. SPATIAL AGENCY theorist, critic, historian, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN E.L. Domeier, An Appendix to the Descriptions of Paris (London: Samuel Leigh, 1820) Image: Jan Brandes, Surgeon’s cabin on the VOC ship De Stavenisse, 1786 (Rijksmuseum) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

LADY FLORENCE DIXIE (née Douglas, 1855-1905) was a Scottish writer, war correspondent, and feminist. Born into aristocracy, she travelled to Patagonia in 1878-79 and later became the first female war correspondent when covering the Anglo-Zulu War (in present-day South Africa) for the Morning Post. She championed women’s suffrage and animal welfare. In her travelogues, novels and children’s books, she often envisioned female political leadership challenging masculine literary traditions by positioning herself or fictional women and girls as leaders. DID YOU KNOW that, in 1895, she became the first president of the British Ladies Football Club, helping to organise the first women’s football matches in England and arranging tours to Scotland? WITHOUT HER, Victorian women would have had fewer models for challenging domestic spatial restrictions and claiming agency in traditionally masculine geographical and literary territories. WHAT IF her contributions to spatial writing and architectural observation had been fully recognised earlier? More women might have been inspired to write about the spatial politics of gender within architecture and landscape, leading to earlier recognition of women’s environmental expertise and leadership. SPATIAL AGENCY educator, surveyor SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN F. Dixie, Gloriana; or, the Revolution of 1900 (London: Henry and Company, 1890) F. Dixie, Aniwee; or, the Warrior Queen (London: Henry and Company, 1890) Image: Botafogo Cove and Sugarloaf Mountain, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ca. 1885-95 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: @sol_perezmartinez This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

HENRIETTE DAVIDIS (1801-76) was a home economist, teacher, governess, and writer of one of the most famous German cookbooks of the nineteenth century, which remained a standard in German households until the early 20th century. Davidis considered running a household a profession and published several books on household management, including gardening books. From the 1860s onward, she also published numerous articles in the journals Daheim and Die Gartenlaube. DID YOU KNOW that, by the time of her death, her Praktisches Kochbuch had already reached its twenty-first edition? WITHOUT HER, German women would not have been as systematically educated in managing domestic space and household organisation. WHAT IF Davidis’s writings had been read as architectural instructions, highlighting how domestic space functions as a choreography of work, care, comfort, circulation, and technology? SPATIAL AGENCY educator, surveyor, critic SHE ALSO WROTE ARCHITECTURE IN H. Davidis, Der Gemüse-Garten: praktische Anweisung zur Kultur eines Gemüsegartens unter Berücksichtigung der Schönheit und des reichlichen Ertrages, 4th ed. (Iserlohn: Julius Bädeker, 1859) H. Davidis, Praktisches Kochbuch für die gewöhnliche und feinere Küche, 4th ed. (Bielefeld: Velhagen und Klasing, 1849) H. Davidis, Die Deutsch-Amerikanische Hausfrau (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1898) Image: Image: Adolph Menzel, Maurer beim Hausbau, 1845 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Dietmar Katz) WoWA Editor: Elena Rieger, @mvdrlc This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

MAIPINA COPACABANA DE LA BARRA (1834-1904) was a Chilean writer, translator, and women’s education advocate. Born in Paris to a Chilean diplomat and a French woman and widowed young, she travelled extensively across Europe and South America with her daughter Eva. Settling in Buenos Aires, she published Mis impresiones y mis vicisitudes (1878), the first travelogue by a Chilean woman. An unconventional figure, she was vegetarian, practised hypnotism, engaged with spiritualism and Freemasonry, and delivered passionate lectures advocating women’s education and professional independence. DID YOU KNOW that she was one of the first documented female Freemasons in Latin America? WITHOUT HER, 19th-century Chilean readers would not have had access to the first comparative analysis of urban development and educational infrastructure across Europe and South America by a Chilean woman, and we would now lack crucial insights into contemporary travel infrastructure, educational architecture, and the spatial challenges faced by women seeking professional education. WHAT IF her advocacy for purpose-built educational institutions for women had been implemented earlier? More women might have gained access to professional training decades sooner, contributing to earlier developments in educational architecture designed specifically for women’s needs, leading to more inclusive urban planning and institutional design across Latin America and influencing the spatial organisation of educational institutions throughout the region. SPATIAL AGENCY critic, historian, surveyor Image: Drawing classroom at the José Miguel Infante Girls’ School, Chile, 1913 (Biblioteca Nacional de Chile) WoWA Editor: @sol_perezmartinez This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

FRANCISCA JOSEFA DE LA CONCEPCIÓN DEL CASTILLO Y GUEVARA (1671-1742) was a Colombian Clarisse nun and mystical writer, considered one of the most important voices in colonial Spanish American literature. Born in Tunja to a wealthy family, she entered the Royal Convent of Santa Clara at eighteen, where she spent her entire religious life. Her works, written in solitude within her convent cell, represent the pinnacle of mystical literature in colonial New Granada, offering profound insights into religious architecture, domestic spaces, and the spiritual geography of colonial life. DID YOU KNOW that her original cell in the Royal Convent of Santa Clara in Tunja has been preserved and converted into a tourist destination? WITHOUT HER, we would lack evidence of the lived experience of colonial religious architecture and the spatial dimensions of mystical life in the Spanish American colonies. WHAT IF her contributions to understanding religious architecture and spatial experience had been fully recognised earlier? More attention might have been paid to the architectural and spatial dimensions of colonial religious life, contributing to more nuanced historical interpretations of religious architecture in Spanish America. SPATIAL AGENCY surveyor Image: Allegorical painting of Francisca Josefa de la Concepción del Castillo, ca. 1813 (Wikimedia Commons) WoWA Editor: @sol_perezmartinez This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory

MARIANNE COLSTON (née Jenkins, 1792-1865) was an English Grand Tourist, travel writer, and artist. After marrying a wealthy merchant heir, she travelled with her husband (and a daughter born while abroad) through France, Italy, and Switzerland, following a classic itinerary, right as the cultural practice of the Grand Tour was beginning to decline. She sketched throughout her journey, and the two-volume travelogue recounting her experiences was accompanied by a large folio volume of engraved drawings of landscapes and architecture. DID YOU KNOW that she handed over the manuscript of the Journal’s first volume while she was still in Paris, writing the final text of the second volume? Her intention to publish from the start is thus evident. WITHOUT HER, less practical details about women on the Grand Tour would have been known. WHAT IF her writing had been recognized as a guide to constructing the spatial settings of the picturesque, including expectation, anticipation, disappointment, and surprise? Female expertise on aesthetics could have played a larger role in art and architectural historiography. SPATIAL AGENCY theorist, historian, surveyor Image: View of Zurich, seen from the Albis, ca. 1830-80 (ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Graphische Sammlung / D 45430) WoWA Editor: @annehultzsch This postcard was produced for the exhibition WOMEN WRITING ARCHITECTURE 1700-1900 curated by @annehultzsch (ETH Zurich, 4 March to 8 May 2026). #ERCWoWA #EUfunded #ETHZurich #architecture #architecturalhistory