Yale-Aided Design: The Work of Female Architecture Graduates
Women at the School of Architecture: Leona Nalle
Photograph of School of Architecture class of 1985 by Marc Luttrell
The Yale School of Fine Arts opened its doors to students in 1869. From its inception, the school accepted female students, but they were confined to more traditional courses of sculpture and painting. When the Department of Architecture was inaugurated in 1916, and until the late 1940s and early 1950s, only men were allowed to enroll. Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the school from 1998 until 2016, argues that the acceptance of women was, at least in part, a decision to make up for the male students lost to the war effort. Women did not immediately flock to the program when the school began to admit them. In fact, many women did not enroll until sometime after World War II. Some of the first women to graduate from the School of Architecture were Leona Annenberg Nalle (M.Arch. 1956) and Estelle Margolis (B.Arch. 1955).
Résumé of Leona Nalle. School of Architecture
[Image used with permission from Leona Nalle]
Leona Annenberg Nalle graduated from Brooklyn College in 1951 with a major in art before enrolling in the Yale Department of Architecture and receiving her Master of Architecture in 1956. Though she completed her architecture education, she went on to work in city planning for only one year after graduation. She spent the majority of her career as an art teacher at different levels.
Leona Nalle’s handwritten note of her accomplishments and interests
[Image used with permission from Leona Nalle]
She continued to write and do independent research, completing a project on “The Black Presence in American Art” in the late 1970s. Her husband, Eugene Nalle, was extremely active in Yale architecture studies, teaching first-year design studio for many years during the 1950s, keeping Leona close to the school as well.