Pub. 1 2020-2021 Issue 2

16 REFLEXION | 2020 | AIA Utah HELEN STARLEY MCENTIRE NORTON Being the first to do anything takes some moxie. Well into the later part of the 20th Century, women were not encouraged to go into, well, any profession, but certainly not architecture, and certainly not in Utah. Helen Louise Starley (McEntire) Norton had a lot of moxie. She was born in SLC and raised in SLC and Ogden, graduating from Ogden High School. She was the only woman in her University of Utah Architecture School Class. She was the first woman to graduate with a degree in Architecture from the University of Utah in 1959. She was the first Utah woman to become a licensed architect through examination in 1973. And, she was the first woman to serve as the president of the Utah Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Some context. Architectural licensing wasn’t a thing in the United States until catastrophic building failures in the late 19th and early 20th Century had the public demanding competency from the people designing and constructing public buildings. The first architectural licensing law was passed in the United States in Illinois in 1897. All 50 states followed suit in their own time; Utah in 1911. Although architecture was an almost exclusively male profession, Louise Blanchard Bethune was named the first professional architect in the U.S. in 1888. Women, including Julia Morgan and Theodate Pope Riddle, were licensed in California and N.Y. after the turn of the 20th Century. There were women, like Morgan and Mary Colter, who designed buildings in Utah and the surrounding region during the first half of the Century, but no woman was trained, apprenticed, and examined for a license in Utah until Helen (McEntire) Norton. In fairness, many architects prior to 1949, when The University of Utah’s Department of Architecture was organized, received their license through experience. Those who were professionally educated were educated out of state. Ken Pollard, AIA, of Pollard Architects, says, “Roger Bailey, FAIA, developed the program, and Charles Moore, Gordon Heck, and James Ackland taught in it. Before that, children would go off to MIT, Cornell, or Penn and then go on to the Beaux-Arts in France.” In a 1979 Salt Lake Tribune article, Helen was quoted as saying, “Women in the past stayed away from architecture as a profession. Until recently, it has been pretty much a man’s world. But I don’t think discrimination existed so much; women just didn’t use to think of themselves in that role.” In our phone call, Helen said, “I started wanting to do architecture when I was nine. I did everything I could do to go and do it. I think they just thought of me as the “girl who could just do it.” After graduation, she served apprentice- ships with Dean Gustavson, VanFrank & Associates, Panushka & Peterson, Ster- ling Lyon Associates – Ogden, William Wilde, and Cain Nelson Wares Architects Women’s History Month Steve Cornell at State History first brought Helen Norton to AIA’s attention. He and his team researched her, and then Phil Hadderlie tracked her down. Largely retired now, Helen lives now in Scottsdale, and shared her story with us. BY PHIL HADERLIE, HEATHER WILSON AND FRAN PRUYN