Woman's Club of Palo Alto | |
![]() Front of the Woman's Club of Palo Alto (WCPA) | |
Location | Palo Alto, California |
---|---|
Coordinates | 37°26′46″N122°09′21″W / 37.44611°N 122.15583°W |
Built | 1916 |
Architectural style | Tudor Craftsmen |
NRHP reference No. | 14001114 |
Added to NRHP | 2014 |
Woman's Club of Palo Alto (founded 1894, and active to present day) is a civic, cultural, philanthropic and social club, initially founded on June 20, 1894 by 24 women in Palo Alto, California. [1] [2] The building that currently houses the club is historical and built in 1916 in a Tudor-Craftsman style, and is located at 475 Homer Avenue in Palo Alto. [1] The building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. [1] [3]
The Woman's Club of Palo Alto was initially founded on June 20, 1894 by 24 women who gathered at a Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto, California. [2] The first president was Mary Grafton Campbell, a doctor. [2] Early members of the club included Anna Zschokke, a figure in the establishment of the Palo Alto Unified School District; Lydia Mitchell, who co-founded the Palo Alto Red Cross; and Julia Gilbert, a figure in the establishment of the Palo Alto libraries. [1] [2]
In 1898, the club formed a circulating library and donated over 2,000 books, which four years later led to the first public library in Palo Alto. [2] In 1911, the club worked for California women's suffrage movement. [1] From 1916 until 1929, the club members were involved in local and national issues concerning World War I, universal suffrage, and women in politics. [1]
The club has hosted many speaking events including suffragist Hester Ann Harland, [4] lectures by Stanford University professors, [5] among others. In 2018, many female engineers and university students met at the club to discuss cryptocurrencies and the club served as a safe space for women in technology to meet. [6]
Club members raised money to buy a lot on Homer Avenue, and it took a decade to raise the remaining money for the building construction. [1] The total cost of the new club building was $10,590. [1]
Charles Edward Hodges (1864–1944) was the architect of the building. [2] The style of the building is a Tudor Craftsman design. [2] The exterior features are Craftsman with a porte-cochere doorway, heavy beams, stucco finish with a painted wood wainscoting band of lap siding at the base of the structure. [2] The Tudor design elements include the one and a half story gable, a half timbered frame and a steeply pitched roof. The interior features a Ballroom with maple flooring and fir board and batten siding on three of the walls, and a stage with an Olio drop front curtain. [2] There is a separate Fireside Room with salt glazed tiles from 1910 made by the Steiger Terracotta and Pottery Company of South San Francisco. [2]
Bernard Ralph Maybeck was an American architect in the Arts and Crafts Movement of the early 20th century. He was an instructor at University of California, Berkeley. Most of his major buildings were in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Anne Henrietta Martin was a suffragist, pacifist, and author from the state of Nevada. Her main achievement was taking charge of the state legislation that gave women of Nevada the right to vote. She was the first head of the department of history of the University of Nevada (1897–1901) and was active in the suffrage movement in England in 1909–1911, working with Emmeline Pankhurst. She was president of the Nevada equal franchise society in 1912, and the first national chairman of the National Woman's Party in 1916. She was the first woman to run for the United States Senate; She lost twice, in 1918 and 1920.
Sara Bard Field was an American poet, suffragist, free love advocate, Georgist, and Christian socialist. She worked on successful campaigns for women's suffrage in Oregon and Nevada. Working with Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Field drove across the country from California to Washington, D.C., to present a petition containing a reported 500,000 signatures demanding a federal suffrage amendment to President Woodrow Wilson. She was known as a skilled orator and became a poet later in her career, marrying her long-time partner and mentor, poet and lawyer C.E.S. Wood.
This timeline highlights milestones in women's suffrage in the United States, particularly the right of women to vote in elections at federal and state levels.
Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby was a British-American lecturer, newspaper publisher and correspondent, women's rights activist, and suffragist leader. Born in England, she immigrated to the US, where she attended university and married the former American Civil War general, later Assistant United States Attorney General, Leonard Wright Colby. In 1883, she founded The Woman's Tribune in Beatrice, Nebraska, moving it three years later to Washington, D.C.; it became the country's leading women's suffrage publication. She was an advocate of peace and took part in the great peace conference at San Francisco during the exposition. She also spoke on behalf of the soldiers of the Spanish War. During the Spanish–American War (1898), she was officially appointed as war correspondent, the first woman to be so recognized.
Women's suffrage was established in the United States on a full or partial basis by various towns, counties, states and territories during the latter decades of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century. As women received the right to vote in some places, they began running for public office and gaining positions as school board members, county clerks, state legislators, judges, and, in the case of Jeannette Rankin, as a member of Congress.
Alice Elizabeth Locke Park was an American suffragist and a longtime defender of women's rights. She served as associate director of the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Committee of California.
Mary McHenry Keith (1855–1947) was an American lawyer and social justice advocate who was especially known for her work in the woman suffrage and animal rights movements. As the widow of the artist William Keith, she also was celebrated for her work cataloguing, preserving, and sharing his collected works.
This timeline provides an overview of the political movement for women's suffrage in California. Women's suffrage became legal with the passage of Proposition 4 in 1911 yet not all women were enfranchised as a result of this legislation.
The women's suffrage movement began in California in the 19th century and was successful with the passage of Proposition 4 on October 10, 1911. Many of the women and men involved in this movement remained politically active in the national suffrage movement with organizations such as the National American Women's Suffrage Association and the National Woman's Party.
Helen MacGrgeor Todd was an American suffragist and worker's rights activist. Todd started her career as an educator and later became a factory inspector. She wrote about child laborers in factories and became concerned with working women's lack of voting rights. Todd campaigned for women's suffrage across the United States and was an envoy on the Suffrage Special. After women won the right to vote, she continued to advocate for immigrants, workers and women.
Women's rights issues in Ohio were put into the public eye in the early 1850s. Women inspired by the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention created newspapers and then set up their own conventions, including the 1850 Ohio Women's Rights Convention which was the first women's right's convention outside of New York and the first that was planned and run solely by women. These early efforts towards women's suffrage affected people in other states and helped energize the women's suffrage movement in Ohio. Women's rights groups formed throughout the state, with the Ohio Women's Rights Association (OWRA) founded in 1853. Other local women's suffrage groups are formed in the late 1860s. In 1894, women won the right to vote in school board elections in Ohio. The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was headquartered for a time in Warren, Ohio. Two efforts to vote on a constitutional amendment, one in 1912 and the other 1914 were unsuccessful, but drew national attention to women's suffrage. In 1916, women in East Cleveland gained the right to vote in municipal elections. A year later, women in Lakewood, Ohio and Columbus were given the right to vote in municipal elections. Also in 1917, the Reynolds Bill, which would allow women to vote in the next presidential election was passed, and then quickly repealed by a voter referendum sponsored by special-interest groups. On June 16, 1919, Ohio became the fifth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.
The women's suffrage movement was active in Missouri mostly after the Civil War. There were significant developments in the St. Louis area, though groups and organized activity took place throughout the state. An early suffrage group, the Woman Suffrage Association of Missouri, was formed in 1867, attracting the attention of Susan B. Anthony and leading to news items around the state. This group, the first of its kind, lobbied the Missouri General Assembly for women's suffrage and established conventions. In the early 1870s, many women voted or registered to vote as an act of civil disobedience. The suffragist Virginia Minor was one of these women when she tried to register to vote on October 15, 1872. She and her husband, Francis Minor, sued, leading to a Supreme Court case that asserted the Fourteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote. The case, Minor v. Happersett, was decided against the Minors and led suffragists in the country to pursue legislative means to grant women suffrage.
The Men's League, made up of groups known variously as the Men's Equal Suffrage League, Men's League for Woman Suffrage, or National Men's League for Woman Suffrage, was an American men's women's suffrage organization formed by several suffragists in New York. The group was based on the idea of the British Men's League for Woman Suffrage. In the early 1900s, Oswald Garrison Villard and Anna Howard Shaw were in contact with one another regarding the creation of a group of prominent men to support women's suffrage efforts. Villard recruited Max Eastman and Stephen S. Wise to help with the project. Later, James Lees Laidlaw became the president and helped spread the concept of the group around the United States. Some colleges, like Harvard University and Swarthmore College, also had their own Men's League groups.
This is a timeline of women's suffrage in Alabama. Women's suffrage in Alabama starts in the late 1860s and grows over time in the 1890s. Much of the women's suffrage work stopped after 1901, only to pick up again in 1910. Alabama did not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment until 1953 and African-Americans and women were affected by poll taxes and other issues until the mid 1960s.
Women's suffrage began in Nevada began in the late 1860s. Lecturer and suffragist Laura de Force Gordon started giving women's suffrage speeches in the state starting in 1867. In 1869, Assemblyman Curtis J. Hillyer introduced a women's suffrage resolution in the Nevada Legislature. He also spoke out on women's rights. Hillyer's resolution passed, but like all proposed amendments to the state constitution, must pass one more time and then go out to a voter referendum. In 1870, Nevada held its first women's suffrage convention in Battle Mountain Station. In the late 1880s, women gained the right to run for school offices and the next year several women are elected to office. A few suffrage associations were formed in the mid 1890s, with a state group operating a few women's suffrage conventions. However, after 1899, most suffrage work slowed down or stopped altogether. In 1911, the Nevada Equal Franchise Society (NEFS) was formed. Attorney Felice Cohn wrote a women's suffrage resolution that was accepted and passed the Nevada Legislature. The resolution passed again in 1913 and will go out to the voters on November 3, 1914. Suffragists in the state organized heavily for the 1914 vote. Anne Henrietta Martin brought in suffragists and trade unionists from other states to help campaign. Martin and Mabel Vernon traveled around the state in a rented Ford Model T, covering thousands of miles. Suffragists in Nevada visited mining towns and even went down into mines to talk to voters. On November 3, the voters of Nevada voted overwhelmingly for women's suffrage. Even though Nevada women won the vote, they did not stop campaigning for women's suffrage. Nevada suffragists aided other states' campaigns and worked towards securing a federal suffrage amendment. On February 7, 1920, Nevada became the 28th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.
This is a timeline of women's suffrage in South Dakota. The early history of women's suffrage in the state is shared with North Dakota. When South Dakota became a state, it held a voter referendum in 1890 on an equal suffrage amendment. This effort failed, but suffragists continued to organize and lobby the legislature to pass voter referendums. None passed until 1918. South Dakota ratified the Nineteenth Amendment on December 4, 1919.
Efforts toward women's suffrage began early in Iowa's history. During the territory's Constitutional Convention, discussions on both African American and women's suffrage took place. Early on, women's rights were discussed in the state by women such as Amelia Bloomer and petitions for suffrage were sent to the Iowa state legislature. While African American men earned the right to vote in 1868, women from all backgrounds had to continue to agitate for enfranchisement. One of the first suffrage groups was formed in Dubuque in 1869. Not long after, a state suffrage convention was held in Mount Pleasant in 1870. Iowa suffragists focused on organizing and lobbying the state legislature. In 1894, women gained the right to vote on municipal bond and tax issues and also in school elections. These rights were immediately utilized by women who turned out in good numbers to vote on these issues. By the 1910s, the state legislature finally passed in successive sessions a women's suffrage amendment to the state constitution. This resulted in a voter referendum to be held on the issue on June 5, 1916. The campaign included anti-suffrage agitation from liquor interests who claimed that women's suffrage would cause higher taxes. The amendment was defeated, though a subsequent investigation turned up a large amount of fraud. However, the election could not be invalidated and women had to wait to vote. On July 2, 1919, Iowa became the tenth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.