Remembering Two of Sacramento’s First Female House Designers

Early 1900’s Advertisement

Early 1900’s Advertisement from Anna Crabbe WAlters

Julia Morgan was the first licensed female architect in the state of California, but she was not the first woman to work as an architect in Sacramento. In 1906, two years before she obtained her license and over ten years before she began work on the Goethe Mansion on T Street (1921) or the Public Market on J Street (1923), Anna Crabbe Walters started advertising her services as a house designer in The Sacramento Star. Five years later, advertisements for yet another female house designer, Alma Johnson Winn, appeared in the architects’ section of the Sacramento Union.  Both women specialized in what were then called “artistic homes,” and several of their buildings still stand in Sacramento today.

Of the two women, Anna Crabbe Walters had the much longer career. She may have learned her craft from architect Ernest Martin Hoen. She was his student in 1903, the same year that he went into partnership with James Seadler, and she was working in the Seadler & Hoen office in 1904. Although she is described as their stenographer in the city directory entry that year, she must have continued honing her architectural skills, because by 1906 she was working as a draftsman for Wright & Kimbrough, the developers of Boulevard Park. In her 1907 city directory entry, she is called a “home designer,” the same label that she used in later issues of the directory. By then she had designed two new houses for the Scheld Blocks, the neighborhood bounded by L, M, 26th, and 28th Streets. She mentioned the houses in an advertisement printed in The Sacramento Star in late November 1906, shortly before the foundations work were laid. One house was in the Mission style, the other was called “old Georgia Colonial;” neither has been identified yet. 

In the years that followed, Walters went on to design two and three-story apartment buildings in both Oakland and Sacramento. She also was the architect of several one and two-story residences in Sacramento, several of them in newer neighborhoods, like New Era Park in midtown and the Meister Tract in East Sacramento.  The Craftsman-style bungalow at 2721 H Street, built for Randolph and Anne Roper in 1911, was one of the historic homes on view during SOCA’s tour in September 1991. Interestingly, Walters’s former employers, Seadler & Hoen, designed the house next door in 1912 (2727 H Street). In 1913, County Recorder Charles A. Root had Walters design his two-story Craftsman-style house at 1101 38th Street (originally 1101 Maple Avenue).   

2721 H Street, Roper House, by ANNA CRABBE WALTERS

1101 38th Street, Root house, by ANNA CRABBE WALTERS

We still have much more to learn still about the long career of Anna Crabbe Walters, who worked as a house designer into the early 1920s. It is important to note that she was also a leading suffragist between 1906-1911, serving as an officer of the Lucy Stone Equal Suffrage Club, hosting club meetings in her Curtis Park home, attending the State suffrage conventions, and participating in pro-vote parades and demonstrations at the State Capitol.  

By contrast, Alma Winn had a much shorter and more turbulent career in architecture. She seems to have entered the field in San Jose, where she managed the Mission Realty Company from 1907-1911 while also developing a reputation as a “designer and builder of artistic bungalows.” Her husband Harry was certified as a master painter and her son Homer was a carpenter. Early in 1911, Alma decided to try her luck in Sacramento because of “the large amount of building in prospect” here (Sacramento Union, February 26, 1911). 

2221 3rd Ave, the Johnson house, by A Winn

1418 36th Street, Shaw house, by ALMA WINN

Like Anna Crabbe Walters, Alma Winn found most of her professional opportunities in the newer neighborhoods. She designed homes in Boulevard Park, East Boulevard Park, Sutter Terrace (as Poverty Ridge was then known), Crescent Park, and West Curtis Park. A few of these buildings still stand, such as the two-story house built for Frederick and Katherine Shaw at 1418 36th Street (originally 1224 Crescent), the two-story house built for Peter and Alice Hanssen at 2514 E Street, and a Craftsman-style bungalow built for Frank and Ernestina Johnson at 2221 Third Avenue.  All this activity came to an abrupt halt in October 1911 when Alma Winn was accused of defrauding a Boulevard Park client and indicted for embezzlement. She fled from Sacramento, not returning until September 1913. By that time, she was in very poor health, and in fact she died before she could be prosecuted. Her brief career as a house designer lasted only a few years, and all the Sacramento projects that we know about date from 1911.

Anna Crabbe Walters (California 1880-1927)

Alma Derr Winn (Minnesota, c. 1870- California 1914)

Catherine Turrill Lupi, an art historian and retired professor from the Art Department at Sacramento State, does historical research for Preservation Sacramento's home tours each year.