Title Pending 9636

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Chloethiel Woodard Smith (1910–1992) was the most successful female architect of her generation in the United States. From 1963 to 1983 she ran a large independent practice in Washington, DC. Crucial to her career was her role in the organization of four exhibitions, held in Washington in 1939, in Montreal in 1941, in Havana in 1950, and in Moscow in 1958. Allowing others to largely take credit for work that she played a disproportionate part in organizing won her the respect of an overwhelmingly male profession. In 1960 she was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, at a time when only five women had received previously that honor. She acquired it partly on the good will she had acquired through these efforts. Smith’s involvement in exhibition design also trained her to think in terms of the public for which she designed, rather than an audience comprised solely of her peers. This proved key to her ability to work with developers to build housing across much of the country and office buildings in downtown Washington that were popular with those who lived and worked in them.