Women’s History Month 2025: Moving Forward Together!

Since 1980, the United States has celebrated women’s history in March. Each year, the National Women’s History Alliance—the organization that successfully lobbied for federal recognition of women’s history—announces a theme. The theme for Women’s History Month 2025 is Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations. Revisit—or read for the first time—two articles from Historic New England magazine that share the stories of women who shaped the field of historic preservation in New England and beyond.

Women at Work

During the first half of the twentieth century, women played a crucial but underrecognized role in historic preservation. While men dominated professional roles, women contributed through architecture, interior design, and decorative arts, often focusing on residential restoration. Architects such as Lois Lilley Howe and Eleanor Raymond blended Colonial Revival and Modern influences, while Nonie Davis Tupper and Susan Higginson Nash advanced interior restoration and historic paint analysis. Women’s preservation work, though often tied to domestic spaces, laid the groundwork for professionalization. Their expertise in adapting and restoring historic buildings was essential to the field’s evolution. By the mid-twentieth century, women transitioned from volunteers to recognized professionals, culminating in broader inclusion after the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act. Historian Barbara Howe aptly described women as the “backbone of the movement,” underscoring their lasting impact.

Read More in the Summer 2012 Issue of Historic New England Magazine

Preservation’s Matrons

Unlike many early-twentieth-century organizations, Historic New England (founded as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1910) invited women to serve alongside men in key roles. Many had honed their organizational skills in groups like the Colonial Dames and Daughters of the American Revolution, but their influence extended far beyond ceremonial duties. Figures like Edith Greenough Wendell, who saved the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from demolition during the Great Depression, and Caroline Osgood Emmerton, who transformed historic Salem, Massachusetts, homes into a settlement house for immigrants, were early Trustees. Architect Theodate Pope Riddle designed and preserved landmark properties, while Abba Goold Woolson, an educator and suffragist, brought intellectual and social activism into preservation efforts. By 1920, nearly half of SPNEA’s leadership was female, proving that regardless of their political stances, these women were united in their mission to protect New England’s past—shaping the future of preservation even before it became a recognized profession.

Read More in the Winter 2020 Issue of Historic New England Magazine