In 1977, The Architectural League, through its recently established Archive of Women in Architecture, organized Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective in conjunction with a book by the same name.

Guided primarily by Susana Torre with support from other founding members of the Archive, the exhibition aimed to present the range and quality of work by women, as both practitioners and commentators, in the fields of architecture, planning, and design. The exhibition was framed to look at the work of women in architecture in the context of issues such as domesticity, private and public life, and the relationship of space to gender relations, and chose to focus on the common female practitioner rather than “exceptional” women.

This project was made possible with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. It was also supported by funds from CBS, Inc., IBM Corporation, and Harry Winston, Inc.