My Daughter, the Architect

A week ago, our son and his partner took the Amtrak train from Union Station in DC to North Carolina to join my husband and me on the Modapoolizer House Tour in support of my daughter, Jeannine’s, first house to be exhibited. Our bus, the last of three on this sold out excursion, started at the farthest stop in Chapel Hill. We would visit four houses before we would travel back to Raleigh to see the last four, eating a box lunch on the way. The bus driver, a pro, navigated the highways and the narrow dirt roads leading to a few of the houses. The weather was warm and sunny. The predicted rain never came. 

Jeannine’s house, Mayview, was number six in line. She is Co-Founder and Principal of the firm REarchitecture. Seven of the houses were designed by women. A welcome trend a long time coming from when I volunteered in the mid 80s for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation back in Oak Park, Illinois. Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, is where Frank Lloyd Wright had his home and studio and built most of his homes—unbeknown to his boss, Louis Sullivan—in violation of a contract not to work independently. An interesting story for future discussion.

2022 – The Michael Galetti and Donna Ransom House, aka Mayview House, 2723 Mayview, Raleigh NC.  Built by REdesign.build.  Photo by Keith Isaacs.

I worked as a nurse practitioner at the same time I volunteered on weekends for FLW Foundation, exposing both my children to architecture. My son worked for the Foundation’s gift shop for a brief period of time while my daughter absorbed the art of design and went on to get her master’s degree in architecture. 

We are proud of Jeannine. Not only is she talented, but she promotes environmental sustainability, * volunteers her skills to the community, and most important to me, interacts with agencies that bolster women in the profession. 

I look back on the days when I volunteered for the FLW Foundation where I learned to appreciate the role of architecture in our daily lives. And I continue to learn on a personal level appreciating my daughter’s work and now also discussing with my grandson his studies in the architecture program at NC State. 

*When the original home on the lot where Mayview was to be built needed to be torn down, Jeannine’s research led to 80 percent of the building materials to be donated and recycled or reused by Habitat for Humanity rather than dumped in a land fill.  

Jeannine Crane McAuliffe was born in Washington DC and grew up in Oak Park IL.  She graduated in architecture from the University of Illinios in 1992 plus a Masters in architecture from University of Washington in 1996. In between degrees she worked for several years in Chicago, some of which on the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana-Thomas house. She worked at NBBJ (Seattle) and Clearscapes. She joined REdesign.build in Raleigh (formerly Alphin Design/Build) in 2013 where she became Design Director.  She is also Principal of REarchitecture, which she co-founded in 2022.