Buildings Speak: Stories of Pioneering Women Architects hosted by Frances McDormand

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Little known stories of pioneering architects — Julia Morgan, the first accredited female architect in California, who designed Hearst Castle and was nearly written out of the history books. Natalie de Blois, who helped imagine the first glass skyscrapers on Park Avenue by day and raised four children by night. Amaza Lee Meredith, a Black queer modernist architect from the 1930s South who helped establish Sag Harbor as a haven for Black intellectuals, artists and beachcombers.

A new special from The Kitchen Sisters, the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation and PRX, hosted by Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand.

Story production by Brandi Howell for the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation’s podcast, New Angle: Voice, in association with The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), mixed by Jim McKee.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Radio Topia, welcome to the Kitchen Sisters present.
0:04.0	We're the Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nicki Silva.
0:09.0	Hi, this is Nicky of the Kitchen Sisters. We want to tell you about a new weekly from PRX called
0:17.7	Monumental. Did you know there are 22 monuments depicting mermaids, but only two depicting U.S. Congresswomen?
0:26.7	The landscape of public memory is changing, but is the day-to-day changing with it?
0:31.9	Monumental will uncover the stories that our monuments
0:34.8	are telling about what and who is important as well as the stories that have been
0:39.8	left out. Join host Ashley C. Ford and our team of 12 journalists across the country
0:46.6	as they confront the reality of what we publicly commemorate, exploring big
0:51.7	questions about the past, present, and future of monuments.
0:57.0	Listen on Mondays wherever you get your podcasts. Trailblazers, ground breakers, skyscraper of visionaries, women who change the skyline
1:11.7	and the built environment that surrounds us today.
1:14.0	The city first fell down and then burned up.
1:17.0	Something like 30,000 buildings were destroyed.
1:20.0	The fire took off through the whole city.
1:22.0	They said it was like Pompeii.
1:24.0	Julia Morgan was determined to bring it back.
1:26.8	Julia redesigned, re-engineered the Fairmont Hotel,
1:30.0	which had been a brand new building
1:31.1	had been open for a month or something before the earthquake.
1:34.0	She was the only one who knew anything about reinforced concrete.
1:36.8	They tried to bring some East Coast architects who might know reinforcing, but the guy who was supposed to come got killed in a duel.
	...

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