On September 11, 1950, Fazlur Rahman Khan — who would go on to revolutionize skyscraper design — enrolled at the University of Illinois. He is remembered as the architect of structural engineering. He had contemporaries and predecessors whose contributions are less visible.

Elise Morrow graduated from Cornell's architecture program in 1926. She was one of three women in her class. When she applied to architectural firms in New York, the partners of one told her directly: "We don't hire women." She documented the meeting in her diary.

Morrow's case is ordinary in its details. Between 1900 and 1950, American schools of architecture graduated hundreds of women who then found themselves unable to practice in the firms where design decisions were made. Julia Morgan is the famous exception — the first woman licensed as an architect in California, who designed Hearst Castle and over 700 other buildings. What her survival required, in practical terms, was establishing her own firm, developing her own client base, and declining to work for any firm that would have placed her under male supervision.

The Hearst commission came through a social connection — Phoebe Apperson Hearst had previously hired Morgan for the Hacienda del Pozo de Verona and trusted her work. The Hearst Castle project, which ran from 1919 to 1947, kept Morgan's firm solvent through the Depression.

Morgan burned her business records before her death in 1957. She left behind the buildings.