Ida Annah Ryan

Ida Annah Ryan was a pioneering United States architect. She was born on November 4, 1873, at Waltham, MA, one of five children of Albert Morse Ryan and Carrie S. Jameson. Albert Morse Ryan was a Waltham city employee and historian who also ran a milk business. She graduated from the Waltham High School. During her Waltham High School years, Ryan was first attracted to the study of architectural design.

In 1892 Ida A. Ryan began attending classes at Massachusetts Normal Art School (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design), which was founded in 1873 with the intention to support the Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870 by providing drawing teachers for the public schools as well as training professional artists, designers, and architects. In 1894 she received her diploma in Elementary Drawing and Constructive Art and Design (which encompasses Descriptive Geometry, Machine Drawing- Construction and Architectural Design).

Ida A. Ryan entered architecture studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which offered the first collegiate architectural studies program in the United States. There she studied with the noted architecture professor Constant-Désiré Despradelle. In 1905, Ryan received the Rotch Prize of two hundred dollars for the regular student making the best record during their four years of studies.

At the end of her term at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ryan’s junior design received the first of the first four prizes. Thereafter, she was invited to compete with only senior and fifth class men in the Junior Beaux Arts contest, in which she won second prize for a grand plan, elevation, and section of a public market.

In 1904, Ryan showed a project for "A Proposed City Hall" at the Boston Architectural Club's annual exhibition. In 1905, Ryan drafted a plan for a New England model town for her final master's degree project. In 1907, Ryan showed five examples of her work at the Boston Architectural Club Exhibition: Camp at Litchfield, NH, Cottage Made From a Stable, Sewage Pump House at Crescent Park, Cottage at Violet Hill, Waltham, and Inexpensive Two-Family House at Waltham Highlands. The two-family house is a large Spanish Revival stucco structure with double height bay windows, hip roof, overhanging eaves and a double height triple-arched entry porch that is a precursor of Ryan's work at 1114 Massachusetts Avenue, St. Cloud Florida; located at 228-240 Hammond Street the double-house is still in good condition more than a hundred years later.

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