A Female Sanctuary on the Former Western Front: The Gold Star Pilgrimage Rest Houses in France, 1930–33

Abstract

The U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps erected temporary rest houses for the Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimages at the military cemeteries of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) in France between 1930 and 1933. The army intended the architecture of the rest houses to be familiar to the pilgrims and to provide them with a female place of comfort and respite. The decision to create the rest houses demonstrated the government’s desire to include women in the commemoration of World War I, yet its choice to demolish them at the end of the pilgrimage program indicates the constrained role of women in that process.