Verna Cook Shipway Papers, 1894 -1979

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Summary

Abstract:
Papers of Verna Cook Shipway, American architect and author. Shipway designed homes in New York state and California, and wrote, with her husband Warren Shipway, five books on contemporary Mexican residential architecture and interior design.
Extent:
7 Linear feet (6 archives boxes, 5 flat boxes, and 53 map case folders)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

Verna Cook Shipway Papers. MSS 105. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Background

Scope and content:

Papers of Verna Cook Shipway, American architect and author. Shipway designed homes in New York state and California, and wrote, with her husband Warren Shipway, five books on contemporary Mexican residential architecture and interior design. The papers include correspondence, travel diaries, sketches, plans and photographs of her homes and details of interiors, and measured drawings of furniture details. Also included are manuscript materials, photographs and paste-ups for her books.

Arranged in four series: 1) BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS, 2) CORRESPONDENCE, 3) WRITINGS, and 4) ARCHITECTURAL DESIGNS.

Biographical / historical:

Verna Cook Shipway was born October 19, 1890, in Spokane, Washington. She attended the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and the School of Architecture at Columbia University, where she met and married fellow architecture student Edgar Salomonsky. They founded an architectural firm in 1920. When Edgar died in 1929, Verna continued to run the business on her own, specializing in Georgian, colonial and English style homes. She published a study of American furniture entitled Masterpieces of Furniture Design (1931).

Shipway designed homes built in numerous New York suburbs including Berkley and Scarsdale. In 1936, she was selected to design the first "Ideal House" for House and Garden magazine. In 1939, Shipway designed a model home for the New York World's Fair that was practical and affordable for the American family in the suburbs. Her home designs featured abundant closet space, natural light, circular staircases, bay windows, large hallways, and light-colored walls to make rooms appear larger.

In the 1940s, Verna Salomonsky married Warren Butler Shipway, an architectural engineer, and moved to California in 1947. During a tour to Mexico, the Shipways met a builder who encouraged them to write a book on Mexican architecture. Warren documented the construction of homes and took photographs, while Verna noted the planning and design and drew sketches. Together they published five books on Mexican architecture and design: The Mexican House, Old and New (1960), Mexican Interiors (1962), Mexican Homes of Today (1964), Decorative Design in Mexican Homes (1966), and Houses of Mexico: Origins and Traditions (1970).

After the death of her husband in 1972, Shipway moved to La Jolla, California, where she died in 1978.

Acquisition information:
Acquired 1978.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Terms of access:

Publication rights are held by the creator of the collection.

Preferred citation:

Verna Cook Shipway Papers. MSS 105. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Location of this collection:
9500 Gilman Drive, Dept. 0175
La Jolla, CA 92093-0175, US
Contact:
(858) 534-2533
spcoll@ucsd.edu
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