Doris Stanley (b. 1926), a native of Farmington, Maine and graduate of the University of Maine in Orono (1948), majored in psychology but took drafting classes because she enjoyed them. She worked two years in newspaper advertising for the Bangor Daily Commercial before coming to Durham, North Carolina in 1950 with a southern friend who was attending graduate school. When the Durham employment office asked about her skills, she mentioned drafting and was told an architect was looking for help, so she took the job with local architect Wiliam Van Eaton Sprinkle. “The first day I put paper to pencil, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven,” she told interviewers Lynn Richardson and Frank DePasquale at her home in Durham on Feb. 28, 2007. Sprinkle did his initial drawings at 1/8” scale, then handed them over to Stanley to recreate them at 1/4”. After Sprinkle's death in 1965, she continued to operate his architectural firm. She was the only female draftsman practicing in North Carolina until 1952 when Elizabeth "Lib" Lee graduated from North Carolina State College’s architectural school and began practicing in Lumberton. Stanley retired in 1989.
This biography was taken from the Durham County Library's North Carolina Collection, Sprinkle-Stanley Architectural Drawings collection .
From the guide to the Doris J. Stanley drawings, 1961-1986, (Special Collections Research Center)
