Elisabeth Coit, 1892-1987

Elisabeth Coit, architect and author, was born in Winchester, Massachusetts on September 7, 1897. She studied at Radcliffe College, 1909-1911, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts School, 1911-1913, and received her B.S. in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1919. She was draftsman-designer in the office of Grosvenor Atterbury in New York, 1919-1929, and then maintained her own office in New York, 1930-1942, designing houses principally for women clients outside of New York City and business premises in New York.Her study of low-income housing in the U.S., "Design and Construction of the Dwelling Unit for the Low-Income Family" was published in Octagon Oct, Nov, 1941. EC was architect and technical standards editor for the Federal Public Housing Authority's publication, Public Housing Design, in Washington D.C. (1942-1947), and then research associate with Mayer and Whittersley, 1947-1948. From 1948 until her retirement in 1962, EC was principal project planner for the New York City Housing Authority. After her retirement, she continued to be active as a housing consultant to government and private organizations.

EC wrote articles and government pamphlets on housing, 1943-1962, reviewed books for the Architectural Record, and beginning in 1968 was editor of the newsletter of the New York Metropolitan Chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials.

EC was the first woman to receive the Langley Award from the American Institute of Architects (1938-1940). Among her other honors were a medal in the Better Homes in America Competition, 1933 and an award as pioneer in architecture from the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1969. In 1955 she was elected a Fellow of the AIA for literature and public service, and received an honorary degree from Wilson College in 1969.

From the guide to the Papers, 1899 (1919-1987), (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)