Lin Huiyin, House Beautiful, and women’s place in architectural culture in the United States in the 1920s

Abstract

Scholarly discussions of the experiences that Lin Huiyin would have had as a student in the United States between 1924 and 1928 have yet to include the experiences she might have had outside the classroom that educated her about contemporary and historic architecture in the country and about the role that women at the time had in understanding and shaping it. The shelter magazine House Beautiful provides an overlooked indication of the exposure to and participation in architectural culture available to middle class and wealthy women in the United States in the years in which Lin Huiyin studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. Understanding how the magazine, which was written largely by and for women, celebrated the architecture of the country’s own past, as well as of China, and the way in which it provided a stepping-stone to either a literary or an architectural career suggests the encouragement Lin may have received from the women she met and how they in turn may have been inspired to take an interest in the field, at a time when there were very few female architects.