News
MAKING HER-STORY
March 16, 2011
| Sometimes women’s contributions to the NYC skyline show up inunexpected places—like the Brooklyn Bridge. Many people know that John Augustus Roebling designed the iconic structure, but fewer know that without his daughter-in-law Emily Warren Roeblinghis vision may have never been completed. |
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| Emily’s great-great-grandson Kristian Roebling (right), a Roebling Museum board member, joined Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation exec director Wanda Bubriski, The Design Trust for Public Space founders Claire Weisz and Andrea Woodner, and Weidlinger Associates project engineer Courtney Clark (center) last night at Ted Moudis Associates’ Madison Avenue office to share his family’s story and other examples of women’s often-unheralded role in NYC’s building industry with nearly 40 NYCREW members for Women's History Month. After John Augustus Roebling’s death from tetanus and son Washington’s incapacitation from caisson disease, Emily took the unofficial helm of the bridge’s construction. For over adecade, she aided her husband, dealt with politicians and engineers, and relayed information back and forth—so effectively that the bridge was completed to the Roeblings’ vision. She was the first to cross the bridge by foot in 1883, with a rooster, a symbol of good luck. |
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| Among the attendees: Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Falcone, Trepp’s Shari Linnick, Beverly Willis (one of the few women architects practicing in the mid-20th century and a founding trustee of the National Building Museum), and Fidelity National Title’sIsabelle Pullis. Courtney shared what it was like to work as a female bridge engineer nearly 130 years later, rehabbing icons like theVerrazano and Robert F. Kennedy bridges, and designing the steel girders for Staten Island’s Lily Pond Avenue overpass. Since joining Weidlinger seven years ago, she says the number of women in her office has tripled. Andrea and Claire then discussed their work at The Design Trust for Public Space, a research and design force behind projects like the transformation of Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, the reclamation of The High Line into a park, and Five Borough Farm, the nation's first citywide plan for urban agriculture. |
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| Howard Wechsler |
| And last week, AREW hosted another female force in the building industry—Forest City Ratner Cos EVP MaryAnne Gilmartin (right, with Perkins+Will’s Debra Cole), who’s spearheading the construction of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards. Current status: groundbreaking on building two (the first residential building) will commence this year, and Barclays Center is scheduled for a ’12 opening. Elsewhere, FCR’s Beekman Tower renamed 8 Spruce Street (the curvaceous Frank Gehry-designed residential tower in Lower Manhattan) is ready for its close-up. She said interest is soaring after an outstanding review by the New York Times’ architectural critic, who called the tower a “skyscraper for the digital age” and “the finest skyscraper to rise in New York since Eero Saarinen's CBS Building went up 46 years ago.” Now, FCR is scheduling tours for the general public. |
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| Joining AREW at the event was Bottomless Closet executive director Kendall Farrell, center, here with AREW Charitable Fund members: The Advance Group’s Vivian Aronica, KTR Real Estate Advisors’ Theresa Nygard, HJ Kalikow & Co’s Dorothy Vermeer, and Sun & Moon Marketing’s Madelyne Kirch. The Fund is holding an annual collection of business attire for Bottomless Closet, which provides clothing, interview training, and career support programs foreconomically disadvantaged women. So dust off those unused suits, pumps, and pearls—this year’s collection will be in tandem with AREW’s April 5 luncheon, a panel of senior women real estate execs who have been there and done that, and will address opportunities for woman in the industry. For more on Bottomless Closet, click here. |
