The Louisa Vaughan Conrad Collection

Louisa Vaughan Conrad was born in Prides Crossing, Massachusetts in 1913. She studied at the Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, affiliated to Smith College, and graduated from the Graduate School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Upon graduation from Smith, Louisa Vaughan Conrad opened, together with Sarah Pillsbury Harkness, a showroom in Boston at 687 Boylston Street, where they sold furniture by Finnish designers Aino and Alvar Aalto. They were the sole and exclusive distributors for Artek-Pascoe of the Aalto furniture in the state of Massachusetts at the time, and operated under the name Pillsbury and Vaughan from 1940 to 1942. Later the store changed location to 169 Newbury Street, and name to Artek in Boston, and closed soon after due to the war.

During World War II Louisa Vaughan Conrad served overseas with the American Red Cross. She met Elbert A. Conrad, a captain in the US Army, in India where they married in 1945. Certified as an architect in Massachusetts, she was a sole practitioner with the bulk of her work in interior design. As a landscape architect she was actively involved in garden associations; she served on the board of associates at the Garden Club of America, and as president of the North Shore Garden Club and the Garden Club of Mount Desert. Louisa Vaughan Conrad died in Prides Crossing in September, 2003.