Detlef Mertins: What was it that drew you into architecture?

Natalie de Blois: My father was a civil engineer with a big family and I was brought up during the Depression. My parents wanted all their children to go to college, but they didn’t have any money. They worked on getting us interested in going to college and expected that we all would. Mostly my father, but even my mother encouraged me as a young girl.

DM: Specifically to study architecture?

NdB: My father was an engineer, as were his father and grandfather. My mother was a schoolteacher. I was selected to be the one that would go into art. I told my father that I wanted to be an architect from the age of ten or twelve. He was always encouraging.

DM: You went to Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, to begin with.

NdB: I went there on a scholarship for one year only and then transferred to Columbia. My father wanted me to go to MIT. Of course, he didn’t have any money. At that time you had to take two years of college to get into an architectural school. Columbia was still an undergraduate program.

So my father kept tabs on Columbia as an alternative. I had letters to the school and talked to them. They changed their rules that year to require only one year of college instead of two. It was during the War in 1940. The fact was that they wanted women. We had foreign and 4-F students in the program. It wasn’t a large class. There were eighteen students including five women.

That was when I decided,

“You’re a woman and you’re in a man’s profession.

You better get a degree.”

Mario Salvadori, Natalie de Blois, and Philip Johnson. Photo courtesy of Natalie de Blois

DM: What was it like at Columbia?

NdB: I liked it. But already after my first year I thought, “Well, I want to get out of school and start working.” But I didn’t. I stayed. That was when I decided, “You’re a woman and you’re in a man’s profession. You better get a degree.” So I enjoyed my experience at Columbia. It was a good education. It wasn’t a Beaux Arts school. We took a survey course in math, descriptive geometry, and statistics as well as an introduction to design and history. There were yearly courses in materials and methods of construction. And we always had painting and sculpture in the art school. Professor Lally was the structural engineer. He invented the Lally column, so who better than Professor Lally. We got an awful lot of background in technical subjects — in structures and mechanical engineering, and I was given an award for my ability to understand structures. It was a New York State exam award, and I got that for the school, for the graduating class.

DM: Had you already started working at that time?

NdB: Yes. During the War everybody had to work. We had to work to eat. The Navy was stationed at Columbia — they had classes there. I earned money by teaching drafting. At summer break I worked at Babcock & Wilcox, who made boilers for the Russian Navy during the War. Their offices were in the Singer Sewing Machine Building in downtown New York. That was a great deal of fun. They wanted me to stay, and I vacillated but decided I’d go back to school.

During the school year, I worked for Frederick Kiesler. He was an architect and theater-set designer who taught at Columbia. He was able to draw well enough to get what he wanted built, like the chairs for Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, but he didn’t know how to finalize his drawings. So he hired me. He was a short little man and lived in an apartment house — a penthouse on 23rd and 10th or 11th Avenue. He had his penthouse scaled for himself. I remember being much impressed that the furniture was small. I worked in his apartment.

I don’t think I ever saw the gallery finished, but I went up there with him in the service elevator. I remember one day as Mr. Kiesler walked me to the subway, he stopped and talked to somebody named Marcel Duchamp. He introduced me to him and afterwards said, “He’s the man who painted Nude Descending a Staircase.”

We worked every day, every night. We worked Saturday.

We worked Sunday. We worked holidays — everything.

DM: How did you get from school to Skidmore?

NdB: When I graduated in January 1944, I didn’t have to look for a job. Morris Ketchum was a graduate of Columbia and he wanted to hire someone from my class, so I was chosen. Ketchum rented space from Wally Harrison in the International Building at Radio City. It was just a little room, about ten by fifteen feet. Ketchum had a desk at one end and Stanley Sharp and I were at the other end with the window.

Ketchum had done two spectacular modern shops on Fifth Avenue, Lederer’s and Ciro’s. They were some of the earliest modern architecture in New York City. So I was excited to work for Ketchum, because I knew he did modern architecture. I didn’t want to do what we called eclectic architecture.

We worked every day, every night. We worked Saturday. We worked Sunday. We worked holidays — everything. We got $25 a week. That was good money.

It was a wonderful experience. Very intense. His office got bigger when he had enough work. He moved to a penthouse at 5 East 57th Street, which was where Skidmore was. I worked for Ketchum nine months. So it was probably after five or six months that we moved. There was a fellow architect who joined the office. He used to take me out dancing to hear Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey. I went out with him quite often. He was very fond of me, but he was not encouraged. So he went to Mr. Ketchum and told him that he just couldn’t work with me there. Mr. Ketchum called me over to his desk. We were all in one room. He said he was sorry, I’d have to leave. Just like that. Of course, I hadn’t experienced a shock like that before.

DM: You were just starting. You had been an excellent student, were doing good work, and suddenly…

NdB: It all happened within a day. He said, “Well, I’ll call up Mr. Skidmore. He’s downstairs — see if he needs anybody.” So he called up Skidmore and told me to go down there. There was no, “Sorry to see you go,” or anything like that. Just “Pack up your things and move downstairs.” So that’s how I got to Skidmore. I went down to Skidmore crushed, and was hired to do drafting on the Abraham Lincoln housing project. I worked just doing lettering and erasing and all those things. Of course, there was lots to learn. Then before I knew it, Skidmore was asking me to work on design projects for him. There were no designers in those days.

The Terrace Plaza Hotel. Photo © Ezra Stoller | Esto

DM: Were you the first designer then?

NdB: Well, I think I was. I was the first designer that the New York office had, other than the partners. In the beginning I worked on the bathhouses at Jones Beach. Of course, he got that because he had contacts with Robert Moses. Skidmore was very much the society person. Always very nice, I thought. I knew his wife and met his children. Later he always talked to me about my family. When the Cincinnati Hotel job came in…

DM: The Terrace Plaza Hotel.

NdB: Even before the Terrace Plaza we worked on the United Nations. Skidmore was a technical advisor to Wally Harrison on the UN headquarters. I was shipped down there for a while, and brought back to 5 East 57th Street to work on a renovation of the New York State Building from the 1939 World’s Fair. In October 1946 the General Assembly meeting was held there. That was my design. I was on the front page of The New York Herald Tribune. This is how exciting it was. I worked on the renovation and the translations booth and the dais. I did a lot of drawing, and studies of alternatives. You realize there are millions of solutions.