WHO: Historic Macon Foundation

WHAT: Announcement of acquisition of Ellamae Ellis League house 

WHEN: 11 a.m. Monday, March 28

WHERE: 1790 Waverland Drive

Historic Macon has acquired the former home of pioneering Macon architect Ellamae Ellis League, and a grant from a leading historic preservation foundation will help restore it.

League designed and built her split-level home, located at 1790 Waverland Drive, in 1940-1941, and it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2005.

Historic Macon acquired the home from Dennis McCleary, and it will use a $75,000 grant from The 1772 Foundation to restore the house. The foundation, based in Connecticut, is a leader in promoting historic properties redevelopment programs nationwide.

League was born in Macon in 1899 into a family of architects. She attended Wesleyan College for one year, but she married George Forest League in 1917 and did not graduate. The two divorced in 1922, leaving a 23-year-old League with two small children and no means of support.

When League decided to become an architect in the 1920s, the only opportunity open to her was through an apprenticeship. Georgia Tech, the primary venue for architecture education in Georgia, did not admit women until after World War II.

She worked as an apprentice at Dunwody and Oliphant from 1922 to 1929, also taking correspondence courses and studying for a year in France. She opened her own company in 1933, right as the Great Depression was lifting. At the time, just 2 percent of American architects were women, and women who were principals in their own firms were virtually nonexistent. 

At the time, few women owned their own businesses, and most female architects specialized — or were expected to specialize — in residential architecture. League, though, took on a variety of complex projects over the years, from Public Works Administration commissions, schools and hospitals to churches, public housing and office buildings.

When demolition threatened Macon's Grand Opera House in 1967, League helped form the Macon Arts Council to save it, and she later supervised the restoration of the building in 1969 and 1970.

Her house in the Shirley Hills subdivision is a reflection of the architect who created it to suit her own needs. It incorporated forward-thinking elements, including the size and placement of windows that provided cross-ventilation. The tri-level floor plan, built-in garage and use of natural materials — redwood siding and roof shingles, for example — were happening on the West Coast at the time, but they would not become prevalent in Georgia until years later.

The backyard, with its gravel (now slate) patio, served as an extension of the living area. Instead of a large front porch that was common to Southern houses, the backyard became the center of outdoor living.

League practiced her profession for more than 50 years, from 1922 until she retired in 1975, and she lived in the house for more than 50 years, until her death in 1991. She is buried in Riverside Cemetery.

In an interview with The Macon Telegraph in 1962, she refused to seek any special consideration as a woman in the male-dominated architectural field. She told a reporter: “I am always an architect. Not a woman architect, but an architect. I encourage women going into the profession not to concentrate on being separate as a woman but to concentrate on being a good architect.”