Theodate Pope Riddle

October 19, 2018

Meet Theodate Pope Riddle, New York’s first licensed female architect

Original Plans for Hill-Stead, from McKim, Mead and White papers 1901, designed by Theodate Pope Riddle, via Hill Stead Theodate Pope Riddle not only made history as New York’s first licensed female architect but also lived it as a passenger aboard the Lusitania, the British ocean liner torpedoed off the coast of Ireland in 1915. The sinking of the Lusitania helped draw the United States into World War One, but neither German torpedoes nor the social strictures of her time could sink Theodate’s indomitable, independent spirit. She would go on to collaborate with McKim, Mead & White on a Colonial Revival masterpiece in Connecticut, as well as reconstruct Theodore Roosevelt’s birthplace on East 20th Street.
The whole history