Emily Elizabeth Holman

Elizabeth Emily Holman
E. E. Holman, circa 1901
Born	(1854-02-02)February 2, 1854 Pennsylvania
Died	September 13, 1925(1925-09-13) (aged 71)
Nationality	American
Other names	Lillie Edwards
Occupation	architect
Years active	1884-1914
Known for	designing most of the buildings at the National Park Seminary

Emily Elizabeth Holman (February 2, 1854 – September 13, 1925), better known by her professional name of E. E. Holman, was one of the first female architects of Pennsylvania. She was active from the 1880s to her retirement in 1914 and was responsible for planning several important historical sites like the Goold House in the Wilder Village Historic District, Wilder, Vermont and the National Park Seminary among many others.

Emily Elizabeth Holman was born in February 1854 in Pennsylvania. Little is known of her early life, but it is known that she had a daughter, Louise B. Edwards, who was born in April 1872. At the time she married the widower David Shepard Holman (1827–1901), who was a scientist, she was known as Lillie Edwards. She and Holman had no children and after his death she continued to work as an architect styling herself as E. E. Holman.

She began her career as a clerk working in an architectural firm. Recognizing that she had talent, she learned the craft and became the person her colleagues relied upon for drawings and design. In 1893, she decided to embark in her own firm and established the company with the name of E. E. Holman, in a deliberate attempt to make her gender irrelevant, at 1020 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Holman built both residential and public spaces, including the summer home of John Hay, Secretary of State in McKinley’s Cabinet; the actor, Francis Wilson's, second home on Lake Mahopac, New York; most of the buildings in the National Park Seminary outside of Washington, DC; and homes from Canada to Jamaica and in every US state except Mississippi. Many of her clients were prominent businessmen, such as Thomas C. Cairns, General Manager of the Alabama Portland Cement Company; Nathaniel K. Davidyan, an immigrant from Armenia, who was a Turkish rug dealer; Frank P. Tanner, banker from Ouray, Colorado; Almon Penfield Turner, president of the Canadian Copper Company; and Henry K. Wick, a coal mining executive in Youngstown, Ohio.

Holman published her first plan book in 1884, nearly a decade before she began her own practice. She published several volumes of plan books and updated them regularly with new material as well as advertisements in newspapers and magazines, such as the Ladies Home Journal. She worked in a variety of different styles, but predominantly her residential work adapted American Craftsman and often added elements of Neoclassical or Colonial styles. She retired in 1914.