Elise Mercur

Early life and education

Elise Mercur (Wagner) was born in 1864 in Towanda to Anna Hubbard Jewett (1832–1901), a poet from Bolton, Massachusetts, and Mahlon Clark Mercur (1916–1905), from Bradford County, a prominent Pittsburgh banker, businessman, and councilman. Ms. Mercur grew up in Towanda, Bradford County, Pennsylvania with her parents and five siblings Robert Jewett Mercur (1854–1929), Helen Mercur (1854-1929), Annie E. Mercur, William H. Mercur, and Hiram Mercur, MD (1861-1918). Ms. Mercur was the niece of Ulysses Mercur, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice (1883-1888). Ms. Mercur was educated in France and Stuttgart, and she studied art, mathematics, languages, and music. Ms. Mercur returned to the United States where she studied design at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1844, the Academy's Board of Directors' began welcoming women artists who "would have exclusive use of the statue gallery for professional purposes" on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, but not until 1860 did women students enrolled in drawing courses. The uniquely exquisite museum building by American architects Frank Furness and George Hewitt most likely inspired the architectural imagination of Ms. Mercur.

Architecture career

The April 1989 issue of Home Monthly introduced Mercur to readers in her role as architect on the job at a construction site:

Miss Mercur has found her profession not only full of honor, but financially profitable.... She goes out herself to oversee the construction of the buildings she designs, inspecting the laying of foundations and personally directing the different workmen from the first stone laid to the last nail driven, thereby acquiring a practical knowledge not possessed by every male architect.

In 1884, Ms. Mercur began to work as a technical illustrator, and she was then promoted to construction foreman, in the Pittsburgh office of a prominent Australian architect, Thomas Boyd. After completing a six-year apprenticeship, Ms. Mercur opened her own architecture practice in the Pittsburgh Westinghouse Building where she was commissioned to design homes throughout western Pennsylvania. In 1896, Ms. Mercur was a founding member of Pittsburg's Architectural Club at Twentieth Century Club of Lansdowne, and she served as the organization's first treasurer. A popular lecturer, iMs. Mercur delivered talks on a range of architecture topics, including construction processes, sanitation, and more, at The New York State Economic Association, and Pratt Institute School of Architecture, Brooklyn, N.Y. Ms. Mercur was commissioned to design public buildings and private homes, and she advertised her architectural plans in the Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Daily Post.

In 1899, Elise Mercur Wagner was listed on the Interstate Architects and Builders list of "Leading Architects in the Seven States." That same year, Ms. Mercur became known as the first woman architect to bring suit in the Pittsburch Common Court for Pleas to recover architects fees. In 1904, Ms. Mercur (Wagner) designed the Second Ward School on Maplewood Avenue, at 8th Street, Ambridge, Pennsylvania. and elementary school which was later occupied by Abridge Recreation, and the Community College of Beaver County Practical Nursing School, and the Ambridge High School for Shop and Industrial Arts, demolished in 1972. Although documentation is limited, Ms. Mercur practiced at least through the early years of the 20th-century, and retired sometime thereafter, due to a serious back injury. In 1924, Ms. Mercur published a history of the towns of Old Economy Village and Ambridge Pennsylvania.

Works, selected

Woman's Building

In 1894, Ms. Mercur entered a design competition for the 1895 International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia. When the announcement was made Ms. Mercur won the commission, she became the first woman to win a major architecture competition in the South. Ms. Mercur's design for the Woman's Building at the Cotton States and International Exposition (1895) was described as "a diamond among jewels." The Exposition opened on September 18, 1895, and by the time it closed on December 31, the exposition hosted over 800,000 guests.

The Women's Building was one of thirteen exhibition buildings arranged around a 13-acre central lake. An impressive classical Palladian style structure, it measuring 128 by 150 feet. Ms. Mercur designed a four square elevation topped by dome which rose 90 feet from the floor. The exterior presented a grand stair and ornamental friezes, cornices; and balustrades encircling the roof, and statues on ornamental pedestals "symbolic of woman and her power." The dome above the roof was surmounted by a statue of "Immortality." The Women's Building visitors entered through a soaring central hall, flanked by a grand double stair, in a natural wood finish. The interior composition of well-lit, airy rooms housed the exhibits.

The Women's Building exhibitions were curated by women from Georgia. The contents where contributed by women around the country. Women culled historical artifacts, decorative arts objects, and industrial products to compose displays in each room, including the Baltimore Room, the Lucy Cobb Room, Mary Ball Washington Tea Room, the Columbus Room, Model Library, Assembly Hall, and others, each assigned to a different state. The National League of Mineral Painters, an organization of members such as Adelaïde Alsop Robineau and Mary Chase Perry, contributed decorative objects and artwork to the New York City section. The unifying objective was to showcase the accomplishments of women throughout the South, and the country, in the areas of education, health care, and the fine and decorative arts. The many elaborate displays reflected a diversity of views spanning the mainstream social and domestic roles of Southern women, such as patriotism and the ideals of traditional motherhood to little known achievements of women counter to mainstream stereotypes. The Legion of Loyal Women display, for example, presented an arrangement of 45 dolls, each one adorned with a small shield showing the name of a state, to illustrate the American Patriotic salute. Other displays posed a challenge to the roles of women and other social conventions. The Colonial Room presented utensils and furnishings, as well as Dolly Madison's spectacles, a gun carried in the Battle of Concord, and brass medallions belonging to George Washington; the display was said to represent "the growing bond of cooperation between the North and South." The Exposition in the Women's Building thus introduced new ideas to foster trade and collaboration between the southern states and Northern states, and to also show ideas, products, and facilities to the rest of the nation and to Europe. The Exhibitions presented prototypes of a hospital room, nursery, kindergarten classroom, and a model library, each one in actual working order. These functional rooms, representative of environments where women played an important roles outside the home and family, equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, features, and furnishings. The model library included an actual collection of publications by women authors from every state in the nation, and a photography exhibition of the portraits of women in every branch of literature, each appended with a verse, letter, or section of a manuscript.

Children's Building

In 1897, Ms. Mercur designed the Marshalsea Poor Farm hospital for children, later renamed the Mayview State Hospital, in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. At the time of commission, the hospital did not have a separate facility for sick children, who where were therefore admitted to the women's dormitory. Ms. Mercur's design for the Marshalsea Poor Farm was a one-storey brick building measuring 48 ft. by 64 ft., trimmed in stone. Four pillars support a front portico. The interior design provided a large central sitting room, six sleeping areas with approximately one hundred beds, a separate area for the nurses, and another for dining.

McIlvaine Hall

Washington Female Seminary was a Presbyterian seminary for women in Washington, Pennsylvania, which is 30 miles (48 km) south of Pittsburgh. The Seminary had a strong tradition of female leadership through its women principals. In 1897, during the term of Mrs. Martha McMillan as principal, the college introduced and a second building to the seminary complex. Elise Mercur was by then a successful Pittsburgh architect selected by trustees to design the new building. The selection followed a pattern of women's colleges and schools providing important opportunities for women professionals. The new seminary building was constructed in 1897 at a cost of about $20,000. The four story brick structure with classrooms, an assembly hall, and a gymnasium. Ms. Mercur designed and supervised the construction of the brick and limestone structure Ms. Mercur modeled the design for the building's portico after Mount Vernon. The interior included Seminary classrooms for several academic departments, laboratories, and faculty offices; an auditorium in the north wing. In 1881, a four-faced clock installed in the tower was dedicated to David F. McGill, and in 1937, a 26-note Stephen Collins Foster Carillon which chimes on the hour was a Founder's Day gift of the Women's Auxiliary of Allegheny County.

Accreditation and financial problems burdened the Women's Female Seminary after the second World War, and the school property was sold to Washington & Jefferson College in 1939. The building designed by Ms. Mercur was renamed McIlvaine Hall. after alumni Judge John Addison McIlvaine. The John L. Stewart Clock Tower was also named after a local newspaper publisher, and in the 1980s, its chimes were replaced with a cassette system. In 2008, the McIlvaine Hall was demolished and the site was rebuilt. Shortly before, President Tori Haring-Smith toured a group of alumni through Ms. Mercur's building.

Later life and legacy

On October 1, 1889, at the Church of the Ascension in Economy Pennsylvania, Ms. Mercur, age 34-years married Karl Rudolph Wagner (1872–1949), a prominent Ambridge, Pennsylvania businessman, banker and councilman of Saint John's Lutheran Church in Old Economy, Pennsylvania. Shortly thereafter she moved to the historic area of Old Economy, Pennsylvania. Ms. Mercur's daughter Adele was born in 1898 in Hungary, and her sons John in 1911, and Johannes Eberhart in 1912, in Pennsylvania, USA.

Elise Mercur Wagner died on March 27, 1947, at the age of 78, in Old Economy Village, Pennsylvania. Ms. Mercur (Wagner) is buried in the Economy Cemetery on Ridge Road, Ambridge, Pennsylvania, USA.

Published works