Isabel Roberts

Isabel Roberts (March 1871 – December 27, 1955) was a Prairie School figure, member of the architectural design team in the Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright and partner with Ida Annah Ryan in the Orlando, Florida architecture firm, “Ryan and Roberts”. It is fair to say that Roberts is an under-appreciated member of Wright’s Oak Park studio staff.

Roberts was born in Mexico, Missouri, the younger of two surviving daughters of James H. and Mary Harris Roberts. James was a mechanic and inventor born in Utica, New York; Mary, a homemaker and a native of Prince Edward Island. They had been married in 1867 in New York state. They lived for a time in Missouri, where Roberts and her sister Charlotte were both born. Leaving Missouri, the Roberts family moved several more times, including to Providence, Rhode Island. They eventually settled in South Bend, Indiana, where James H. Roberts became Deputy Director of Inspections for the State of Indiana. They were active members of the First Presbyterian Church of South Bend, and social and civic groups through which they became friends of Laura Caskey Bowsher (later, DeRhodes). This friendship eventually led to Roberts' introducing Laura to Frank Lloyd Wright and Laura's commissioning from Wright's studio the K. C. DeRhodes House.

Isabel Roberts spent three years in New York City, studying architecture in the atelier Masqueray-Chambers (1899-1901), the first atelier (or studio) in the United States established to teach the practice of architecture along the French lines of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. It was established by Emmanuel Louis Masqueray; architect Walter B. Chambers shared in this enterprise. Located at 123 E. 23rd Street, this was the first wholly independent atelier opened in the United States. Masqueray is best remembered as the architect of the St. Louis Exposition and of the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Roberts found herself among an impressive roster of future architects who studied with Masqueray, including William Van Alen, who would become the architect of the Chrysler Building. Starting in 1899, Masqueray made a concerted effort to include women among his architectural students and even opened a second atelier especially for women students at 37-40 West 22nd Street in New York. As was said at the time, "...he has unbounded faith in women's ability to succeed in architecture...provided they go about it seriously." While in New York, Roberts lived at 129 West 96th Street.

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