Noyes, Ida Elizabeth Smith, 1853-1912.

Ida Elizabeth Smith Noyes was born on April 16, 1853 in Croton, Delaware County, New York to Joel W. and Susan M. Wheat Smith. The family of seven moved to Iowa in 1857. In 1870 Noyes began attending Iowa State College, then spent a term at the State University of Iowa City, finally completing college at the State University at Ames in 1874.

Noyes returned home and became a teacher in the Charles City High School. She married La Verne Noyes, an inventor and manufacturer whom she had met in college, on May 24, 1877. The couple moved to Chicago in 1879, where Noyes followed her ambition to become an artist by enrolling at the Art Institute. This interest in art led her to make a two-year trip to Europe in 1886. In a volume of the University Record from 1919, Thomas W. Goodspeed writes that driven by her artistic instinct, Noyes was “a devotee of the camera” during her years in Europe.

Noyes made other trips, including an 1892 journey to the Pacific Coast where she visited Oregon, Washington, and California. She returned to Europe in 1894, and again in 1895. In the summer of 1897, Noyes and her husband took a trip throughout the West and Northwest of the United States, eventually ending up in Alaska. Later that same year, Noyes and a friend left to spend six months traveling around the world, having been inspired by a similar journey described in East, West-Home’s Best, by Sarah A. Pope. During this trip, Noyes took almost two thousand photographs. Other travels followed, and in 1910 Noyes made her last trip abroad to London.

Noyes, in addition to having a great love for travel, was very interested in the activities of women. She was the director of the Twentieth Century Club and of the Women’s Athletic Club. She was president of the North Side Art Club and was a member of the Chicago Colony of New England Women. Later, Noyes was an active member, then secretary and regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Chicago Chapter. Noyes went on to become the vice president of the national organization.

After a lengthy illness, Ida Noyes died on December 5, 1912. Six months after her death, her husband announced to the Trustees of the University of Chicago that he wanted to build a hall dedicated to her memory. The cornerstone for Ida Noyes Hall was laid on April 17, 1915.

From the guide to the Noyes, Ida. Papers, 1854-1907, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)