View source for Ethel B. Power

{{Infobox architect
| name                  = Ethel B. Power
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| birth_date            = 1881
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| death_date            = {{Death year and age|1969|1881}}
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| nationality           = American
| alma_mater            = [[Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture]] (1920)
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}}
'''Ethel B. Power''' (1881–1969)<ref name=frederickson/> was an [[architect]] and the editor of ''[[House Beautiful]]'' magazine.
Power championed a generation of women architects who emerged from the newly founded [[Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture]].<ref name="gruskin" /> She also published a compilation of plans for small houses by notable architects of the day.
==Publishing career==
=== ''House Beautiful'' ===
Power was the editor of the influential shelter magazine ''House Beautiful'' (1923–34) for more than a decade.<ref name="friedman" /> She also often published her own articles. She championed the work of Cambridge School graduates in general, and in particular on Raymond's work, many of which she wrote herself.<ref name="frederickson" /> When in 1934 the magazine was sold and its editorial offices transferred to New York City, Power resigned because she did not choose to leave Boston.<ref name="frederickson" />
=== ''The Smaller American Home'' ===
Her book ''The Smaller American Home'' (1927) is a compilation of 55 designs by notable architects of the 1910s and 1920s, with a focus on built-in features.<ref name="ebp" /> She includes floor plans of houses in the [[American colonial architecture|Colonial]], [[Spanish Colonial Revival architecture|Spanish Revival]], [[Creole cottage]], and [[Storybook house]] styles together with shots of example interiors and landscaping.
Selected architects included [[Dwight James Baum]], [[Wallace Frost]], [[John F. Staub]], [[Wallace Neff]], [[Eleanor Raymond]], and [[Henry Atherton Frost]].<ref name="ebp" /> Unlike some critics of the day who liked to position historicist and modernist architecture as antithetical to each other, Power stressed the features the two approaches shared, such as simple rectilinear plans and absence of ornamentation.<ref name="davis" />
A portfolio of materials about Raymond's architectural work held by the museum [[Historic New England]] includes a number of articles by Power about Raymond.<ref name="hne" />
==Education and personal life==
Power was part of the first cohort to enter the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in 1915. This group included her life partner, architect [[Eleanor Raymond]] (1887–1989), whom she had previously met through a suffragist organization.<ref name=frederickson/> She graduated in 1920.<ref name=frederickson/> Power and Raymond remained together for more than half a century, until Power's death.<ref name=gruskin/><ref name=friedman/> They resided on Beacon Hill in Boston.<ref name=frederickson/>
==Publications==
* ''The Smaller American House'' (1927)
* "Variation on the Colonial," ''House Beautiful'' (1935)
==References==
{{Reflist | refs=
<ref name=frederickson>Frederickson, Kristen, and Sarah E. Webb, eds. [http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt5b69q3pk/ ''Singular Women: Writing the Artist'']. Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2003.</ref>
<ref name=davis>Davis, John, Jennifer A. Greenhill, and Jason D. LaFountain, eds. ''A Companion to American Art''. Wiley Blackwell, 2015, p. 554.</ref>
<ref name=gruskin>Gruskin, Nancy. [http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt5b69q3pk&chunk.id=ch11&toc.id=ch11&brand=ucpress "Designing Women: Writing About Eleanor Raymond"]. UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004.</ref>
<ref name=ebp>Power, Ethel B. ''The Smaller American Home:  Fifty-five Houses of the Less Expensive Type Selected from the Recent Work of Architects in All Parts of the Country''. Little, Brown, 1927.</ref>
<ref name=hne>[http://www.historicnewengland.org/collections-archives-exhibitions/collections-access/collection-object/capobject?refd=PC043  "Eleanor Raymond photographic collection"]. Historic New England website.</ref>
<ref name=friedman>Friedman, Alice T. ''Women and the Making of the Modern House: A Social and Architectural History''. Yale University Press, 2006.</ref>
}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Power, Ethel B.}}
[[Category:1881 births]]
[[Category:1969 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American magazine editors]]
[[Category:American women architects]]
[[Category:American women magazine editors]]