GR WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE - MARION BLOOD AIA

Architect and Engineer who worked for the American Bridge Company of U.S. Steel in the 1950s, Grand Rapids Women’s Lifestyle Magazine 12/2019. Copyright Pam VanderPloeg 2019.

Marion Blood story in Women's LIfestyle Magazine.jpg

MARION FRANCES BLOOD, ARCHITECT-ENGINEER

Who would have guessed that a talented woman architect who worked as a residential draftswoman in 1925 Grand Rapids would be drafting plans for war munitions in 1942 and the Mackinac Bridge in 1952.

After Marion Blood graduated from Grand Rapids Central High School in 1918, she went to work as a draftswoman for architect Kenneth Welch, who encouraged her to apply to the University of Michigan’s architecture program. She was one of three women and 25 men to graduate in 1924 with a B.S. in Architecture and was a member of the T-square Architecture Honor Society. Her talent and initiative won Blood the coveted University of Michigan Booth Graduate Fellowship for six months of European travel. While abroad, she studied Paris buildings and English landscape architecture.

The 1920s building boom provided unprecedented opportunities for women in architecture. In 1925, when Blood returned from Europe, she designed upscale homes for Grand Rapids architect Alexander McColl, who, following his University of Michigan graduation, had trained as a young draftsman in the Detroit office of Emily Butterfield, Michigan’s first registered woman architect. Blood also became a registered architect by examination in 1932. When the Depression caused McColl to close his downtown office, Blood turned to various miscellaneous work projects including teaching women home building skills at the YWCA’s Caroline Putnam School.

In 1942, the Wartime Procurement Act converted U.S. manufacturing into wartime industries once again creating new opportunities for women. Blood, who was working for General Motors, became a Civil Service assistant architectural engineer designing defense guns and tools for the Grand Rapids office of the Chicago-based Air Force Central Technical Training Command. Blood moved to Muskegon in 1943. Completing a Michigan State University Time and Motion Studies certificate, she worked as a process engineer on glider contracts for the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, and, also designed homes and building additions on the side.

In 1947, Blood moved to Ohio where she and her sister had inherited a large family farm in historic Washington Township, Columbiana County. Blood worked in Youngstown for Glancy & Carle as a structural draftsman, and from 1949-1952 taught architectural, structural and mechanical drafting to veterans.

In 1952, Blood became an engineering detailer on the Mackinac Bridge project for the American Bridge Company Division of the U.S. Steel Company in Pittsburgh. Detailers were required to complete over 89,000 blueprints and structural drawings during the Mackinac Bridge project. She continued to work on other important bridge contracts until her retirement, including the Hudson River’s Tappan Zee Bridge (replaced in 2017). Blood’s degree and experience made her eligible to first join the Society of Women Engineers, formed in 1950 to promote women in engineering, and later to earn senior engineer status in the organization.

Blood did not slow down during retirement. She engaged in nonstop volunteer work, including serving as the Salem, Ohio Historical Society president. She died at age 89 in 1990 and is buried in the Ohio’s Highlandtown Cemetery.

Marion Blood’s life and work of forty-seven years in West Michigan and forty-two years in Ohio stand as a model of persistent professional courage and determination.