Victorine & Samuel Homsey
| Victorine & Samuel Homsey | |
|---|---|
| Partners | Victorine du Pont Homsey Samuel Eldon Homsey |
| Founded | 1935 |
| Dissolved | 1979 |
| Location | Wilmington, Delaware |
Victorine & Samuel Homsey was an American architectural firm centered in Delaware and founded by the architects Victorine du Pont Homsey (1900–1998) and Samuel Eldon Homsey (1904–1994). It was one of the first architectural firms in the United States founded by married partners.
Victorine du Pont was born November 27, 1900, in Grosse Point, Michigan, to Antoine Biderman (or Bidermann) du Pont, Jr., and Mary Ethel (Clark) du Pont. The Du Ponts were an old and well-to-do family; her great-grandfather was the industrialist Alfred V. du Pont. She attended Wellesley College, where she earned her undergraduate degree in 1923. She went on to get her certificate in architecture in 1925 from the Cambridge School of Domestic and Landscape Architecture for Women (which was not yet a degree-granting institution); ten years later, after the school became affiliated with Smith College, she was awarded the M. Arch degree.
After leaving the Cambridge School, she worked as a draftsperson at the firm of Allen and Collens in Boston (1926–27), and there she met Samuel Homsey, whom she married in 1929. In 1928–29, she moved to another Boston firm, P. Patterson Smith, where she also worked as a draftsperson.
Samuel Eldon Homsey was born August 29, 1904, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Elias S. and Margaret (Sabbag) Homsey. He earned both his B.S. and his M.S. Arch degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with his master's degree in 1926. He later studied painting informally and painted landscapes in watercolor, several of which are in the collection of the Biggs Museum of American Art.
Victorine and Samuel moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and in 1935 opened a firm known as Victorine & Samuel Homsey (later Victorine & Samuel Homsey, Inc.). They are thought to have been the first Delaware architects to work in the International Style, and one of their early house designs was chosen by New York's Museum of Modern Art to represent International Style in a 1938 Paris exhibition. In general, however, their style was more eclectic, and in part because they began their careers during the Great Depression, they felt it was important for architects to work on developing ways to work economically and with new materials. In 1950, one of their house designs for small sites was included in a "Five-Star" series developed by Better Homes and Gardens magazines, the working drawings and specifications for which could be bought by mail for $5.
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