Talk:Ellamae Ellis League

Possible Enhancements
Confession: I have yet to directly access the sources Smith 1979, Love 1981, or Berkeley & McQuaid 1989. They're not online or only available in snippets at the time I'm writing this. This is why they're mostly cited indirectly through references in Brock 2004. If you are looking to enhance this article with additional material, those three sources would be good places to start. However any of the other sources listed in the Sources & Further Reading section would be good places to look for more material to add. That's why I separated the references like that - to call attention to the juicier sources.

Finally Wesleyan's alumnae magazine is digitized at Internet Archive here and a number of small notices can be found over the years mentioning League including her AIA activities, the fact her mother and grandmother attended Wesleyan, and her selection (with several other architects) to design Macon's new 500-bed hospital in 1953. Cheers. --Krelnik (talk) 20:20, 25 April 2017 (UTC)


 * An update: Smith 1979 is now online at the Atlanta History Center site, I linked up the citation. It's viewable online and downloads as a PDF. It mentions League a couple of times, but mostly has good stats on the prevalence of women architects in Georgia and the US. It might be useful for other articles about Atlanta-area women architects, mentioned names include of course Leila Ross Wilburn and Henrietta Dozier (multiple pages on each) as well as Elise Mercur, June Wood Wicker, Miriam Toulmin Williams, Helen Coleman Greear, Elizabeth Moore Ellis, Ellen Donaldson, Dorothy Dugger (architect), Merrill Elam, Bessie Stephenson, Barbara Crum, Meda DuBose, Mary Gunn (architect), Sheila McIntyre, Sylvia Townes. --Krelnik (talk) 15:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Sources on Firsts
Be warned that some of the sources disagree on where League falls in the history of Georgia women architects, AIA members, and FAIAs. I've tried to source it as carefully as I can. But for future travelers, please note in particular that the second paragraph on page 12 of Brock 2004 has several errors, which have been propagated to other sources.

League was not the sixth woman FAIA nationwide, nor was she in the first FAIA class that had two women. That distinction went to Lutah Maria Riggs & Chloethiel Woodard Smith in 1960 (the 5th and 6th). League was the eighth woman architect, that is true (see appendices in Allaback 2008 for a list).

And finally, the statement "At the time of her death in 1991, Ellamae Ellis League was the only woman FAIA in Georgia and one of only eight nationwide" is either confusingly worded or outright wrong. (And it was repeated in Ray 2005 and then quoted from there in other articles). There were many other women FAIAs appointed in the 1970s and 1980s, and even if you assume Brock meant still living, the figure of eight women in 1991 is demonstrably incorrect. (Here are 9 women who were FAIA before 1991 and still alive when League died: Chloethiel Woodard Smith, Victorine du Pont Homsey, Elizabeth Kendall Thompson, Natalie de Blois, Anne Tyng, Sarah P. Harkness, Marjorie Wintermute, Norma Merrick Sklarek and Audrey Emmons. There are more as well).

Also there's a source out there somewhere that claimed League was the first FAIA in "the South" not just the first one in Georgia - also easily debunked as Marion Manley was an FAIA in 1956 and she lived and worked in Florida.

Hope that saves future editors of this article some time. --Krelnik (talk) 17:57, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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works lists
Hey, I contributed a little bit to this article in the past and see that it is being developed further, great. I mostly write about NRHP topics and here I probably added some stuff about some of the NRHP-listed properties she designed. Currently there are two works list sections in the article, for "NRHP listed properties" and for "Other works". I personally would prefer for those to be merged and just have one "Works" or "Selected works" section, sorted by date of design/construction. For the NRHP ones I think it is worth mentioning they are NRHP-listed in each of their items, even if that is a tad repetitive, because NRHP listing does connote a lot appropriately about merit/recognition/importance of the works. But being NRHP-listed is an after-the-fact and somewhat random honor; it is not as if she designed one set of buildings in order for them to be included in the NRHP. In fact I really don't like there being a separate NRHP section. My two cents. --Doncram (talk) 20:53, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The way that came about was originally I had a section there on her home, which she designed and which was later NRHP listed. But someone decided to separate the home out to its own article (a perfectly valid decision) which made that sub-section a bit small and odd. So I repurposed it, trying to get rid of a bunch of repetitive "(NRHP listed)" fragments in the property list and shorten the article overall. I get your comment about the chronology of it being a bit wonky but I do think its worth highlighting the NRHP properties a bit more to help make the point about her notability. It also helps explain why the opera house is listed when she did not design it. But I'm fine with whatever is decided. --Krelnik (talk) 13:42, 26 May 2019 (UTC)