Papers of Joan Forrester Sprague, 1935-1998

Joan Forrester Sprague was a feminist architect and planner who worked on developing housing for low-income women and children. She was born in New York City, received a bachelor's degree in architecture from Cornell University in 1953, and a master's degree in education, with a concentration in organization development, from Harvard University in 1976. Early in her career, Sprague designed furniture and did consulting for Sprague Associates, Architectural Resources, Inc., Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Inc., and Hugh Stubbins & Associates, Inc.. One of her designs was the butcher block couch. Sprague was a co-founder of Open Design Office, a non- hierarchical practice of women architects and planners in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Women's School of Planning and Architecture, an alternative school that offered sessions around the country from 1974-1981; the Women's Design Center, which sponsored the Women's China Study Group of Architects and Planners; the Women's Development Corporation in Providence, Rhode Island; and the Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development, Inc., in Boston. She was a consultant for Better Homes Foundation, the Elizabeth Stone House in Boston, the Women's Housing Coalition in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Save the Children. Sprague was the author of two manuals, A Development Primer: Starting Housing or Business Ventures by and/or for Women (1984), and A Manual on Transitional Housing (1985); and two books, Taking Action: A Comprehensive Approach to Housing Women and Children in Massachusetts (1988), and More than Housing: Lifeboats for Women and Children (1991). She lectured at Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Arizona State University, as well as in Canada, the Netherlands, the People's Republic of China, and the former Soviet Union. In 1987, she received the Woman of the Year Award from Boston Business and Professional Women, and in 1988 the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus' Abigail Adams Award. In 1957 she was married to Chester Sprague, a professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of their shared interests was the architecture of Native American pueblos from pre-historic times to the 1960s. Sprague died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on April 6, 1998.