Margaret Fulton Spencer
| Margaret Fulton Spencer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Margaret Alexina Harrison Fulton September 26, 1882 |
| Died | January 1, 1966 (aged 83) Philadelphia |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Margaret Fulton, Margaret Spencer |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Spouse(s) | Robert Spencer |
| Practice | Frank Miles Day |
| Projects | Rancho Las Lomas |
Margaret Fulton Spencer (1882–1966) was a painter and early American woman architect who designed and built the architecturally unique dude ranch Las Lomas Estates outside of Tucson, Arizona. She was the second woman to become a member of the American Institute of Architects.
Margaret Alexina Harrison Fulton was born September 26, 1882, to Robert and Margaret Alexina (Harrison) Fulton, a wealthy couple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a niece of the painters T. Alexander Harrison and L. Birge Harrison. The Fulton family eventually moved to Santa Barbara, California.
Fulton enrolled at Bryn Mawr College in 1901 but left after two years. She then spent 1904 studying painting at the New York School of Applied Design, and the summers of 1904 and 1905 at the Art Students League. She studied painting with her uncle Birge in Woodstock, New York, between 1904 and 1907. In around 1908, she began to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was the only woman in her class. She graduated from MIT with a degree in architecture in 1911, making her part of the second generation of early American women architects. By 1912 she had found work with Philadelphia architect Frank Miles Day.
After college, Margaret continued her painting studies with the landscape painter William Langson Lathrop, who had founded an art colony near New Hope, Pennsylvania. In 1913 she met another of Lathrop's students, the impoverished Pennsylvania impressionist painter Robert Spencer, who quickly began courting her. Margaret was already engaged to someone else, but the Lathrops—with whom she was living at the time, and who favored Robert—intercepted an important letter from her fiancé, leading Margaret to believe she had been jilted. In something of a pique, she got engaged to Robert, and in 1914 they got married. The couple settled in New Hope, where they built a house using Margaret's inheritance and had two daughters, Margaret (known as Tink) and Ann, who would later become a painter herself. The missing letter was unearthed and delivered to Margaret years later, and according to her daughters, she remained angry about the deception that had been practiced on her right up to her death.
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