Eleanor Raymond Collection

Eleanor Agnes Raymond, FAIA and architect, was born March 4, 1887, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was the fourth child of Thomas and Josephine Raymond. Raymond graduated from Wellesley College in 1909. In 1916, she enrolled in the newly established Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture for Women. The school’s curriculum focused heavily on domestic design principles, a strong feature within Raymond’s future work.

Upon her graduation in 1920, Raymond found employment within Henry Atherton Frost’s architecture practice, where she eventually became a partner. Raymond formed her own Boston-based practice in 1935. Her client base expanded over the course of the 1920s and 1930s thanks in part to the publicity her work received in publications like House Beautiful, for which Raymond’s lifelong colleague and companion, Ethel B. Power, served as a contributor and editor.

Raymond showed interest in novel materials and building systems. For example, Raymond’s 1948 Sun House (or Dover Solar-Heated House) project also featured a heating system designed by Dr. Maria Telkes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was one of the first successful solar-heated buildings in the Northeast.

Raymond was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1961. Her work has been honored in an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, Eleanor Raymond: Architectural Projects, 1919–1973, 1981. Raymond was also awarded a formal Master of Architecture degree from the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in 1936.

Raymond enjoyed national and international travel throughout her life, and often traveled with Power. The two lived together until Power’s death in 1969. Eleanor Raymond died on July 24, 1989.

Ethel Brown Power, editor and architectural critic, was born April 23, 1881, to Stephen and Jennie Power in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Power graduated from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics in 1904 and enrolled in the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture for Women in 1916. From 1923 to 1934, Power served as editor and contributor to House Beautiful magazine, in which she frequently wrote about Eleanor Raymond’s work. Her book The Smaller American Home was published in 1927, and showcases personalized interior features, landscaping, and floorplans within a variety of residential architectural styles.

In addition to enjoying a mutually beneficial professional relationship, Power and Raymond were also life partners. The two women lived together at 112 Charles Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston and spent summers together at Mussell Point, their vacation cottage in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Power and Raymond frequently traveled together, and Power often made travel arrangements for and recorded the details of their trips in her diaries. Power preceded Raymond in death following a car accident on January 30, 1969.