The PWA was part of the New Deal, a series of economic programs designed to heal the effects of the Great Depression. The PWA was created through the National Industrial Recovery Act and fostered the building of large-scale public works, such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. It created infrastructure that generated national and local pride in the 1930s and remains vital decades later. The PWA had a rival agency with a confusingly similar name, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which focused on smaller projects and hired unemployed skilled workers.
Frances Perkins first proposed the idea of a federally funded public works program to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Perkins was an economist and social worker who became the first female cabinet member in United States history when Roosevelt appointed her Secretary of Labor, a position she held throughout Roosevelt’s presidency. Perkins was avant-garde for her day, refusing to take her husband’s name when she married in 1913, and subsequently defending her right to her own name in court. As part of her social services career, Perkins surveyed appalling living and working conditions in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen and witnessed the horrific 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, where trapped young women leapt off window ledges into the streets below. She was appointed to the Committee on Safety of the City of New York and visited workplaces to expose hazardous practices and champion legislative reforms.
Frances’ PWA idea, in turn, advanced the realization of a women’s residence hall at Purdue University. When Purdue University’s Board of Trustees voted in October 1933, authorizing President Edward C. Elliott and board president David Ross to complete plans for the Women’s Residence Hall and to apply for financial assistance under the PWA, the vote was unanimously in favor. After thirteen years of striving for a women’s residence hall, Virginia C. Meredith, the sole woman on Purdue’s nine-member board, was very pleased. And after waiting all those years, work on the dormitory had to commence immediately to fulfill a PWA requirement. The Women’s Residence Hall would be built quickly in six months.
The new hall would need a capable and vibrant manager. Dean of Women Dorothy Stratton selected Helen Schleman as director. Dorothy had come to know Helen’s strengths and potential as Helen worked in the Office of the Dean of Women, heading up the National Youth Administration initiative. Dorothy said, “Helen lacked self-confidence. She didn’t know what she was capable of. If I made any contribution to Helen’s life, it was that I gave her some confidence. I helped her know that she could do what she set her mind to doing.”
Those who knew Helen throughout her life would not have guessed she ever lacked confidence. Even though she was shy, she became a candid powerhouse with a worldview of equality for all persons, male and female, all colors, races, nationalities, and disabilities. She hated discrimination of any kind, and she would battle against it all of her life.
The Women’s Residence Hall was slated to open in fall of 1934. During the preceding spring, an executive memorandum was sent from Elliott’s office to the officers and heads of departments of the University to explain the ins and outs of the hiring and overseeing of the director of the hall. The memorandum stated: “It will be appreciated if those interested in the welfare of the women students at Purdue University will cooperate to the fullest extent with the Dean of Women and the Controller in dealing with their respective problems arising from the operation of the new hall.”
The flowchart of Purdue’s hierarchy was compact in those days. A hand-drawn, updated version was included with the memorandum. The dean of women, dean of men, and controller were on equal ground and reported directly to the president, who reported to the Board of Trustees. Dorothy’s immediate and only boss was Elliott. Years later, Dorothy said of the order of command during her time: “The organization was very simple—I reported directly to the president. There were some advantages in those days. None of this going through this one and that one and the other one before you can get to the president. I reported directly to him, and I was an officer of the University.”
Helen, on the other hand, had two bosses: Dorothy and Robert Bruce (R. B.) Stewart, the controller and chief financial officer. Dorothy selected Helen as director and jointly, she and Stewart recommended her. Helen had just completed her master’s degree when she accepted the position. She would be responsible to Stewart for the business management of the hall and to Dorothy for its social and educational programs. Decades later, Helen spoke to a group of women at a Mortar Board leadership conference and said, “I had two bosses. I had the dean of women and I had the controller of the University, but don’t be afraid of that. You have to work a little harder, but you learn twice as much. If you have a chance to take two jobs or have two bosses on the job, take it.”
Stewart was Purdue’s chief financial officer from 1925 to 1961. He made a striking impact with his excellent management and unquestionable integrity in the handling of Purdue’s resources during a time of growth and evolution for the University. Stewart Center, formerly Memorial Center, was named in his honor after his retirement.
Karl H. Kettelhut, whose Lafayette construction company built many campus buildings, worked with architect Walter P. Scholer to design the Women’s Residence Hall, which cost approximately $250,000. Scholer visited several colleges and women’s schools before drawing up his plans, which used the latest ideas in dormitories to house 125 women.
An Exponent article described the hall:
Of English Tudor design in brick with Indiana limestone trim, the new residence hall will be of fireproof construction throughout and modern in every way.… All out-of-town freshman girls will be expected to live in the new girls’ residence hall, which will provide among other features, laundry, shampoo room, lounge and reception rooms.… The laundry is to be equipped with electric washers and driers.… The shampoo room will contain electric hair driers, and the sewing room is to be equipped with machines for those who wish to do their own sewing.
As the construction was underway for the Women’s Residence Hall, Stewart’s wife, Lillian, was in charge of the interior decorating and selection of furnishings. Lillian had studied interior design at the University of Wisconsin. Years later, R. B. said, “She really helped us. We couldn’t afford to hire a decorator.” Evidently, Lillian donated her services.
The couple met for five days in Chicago with D. Robertson Smith, a designer from the American Furniture Company of Batesville, Indiana. Smith was an Englishman who had designed the nursery furniture for the Prince of Wales (who became Edward VIII and later the Duke of Windsor, perhaps best known as the King of England, who abdicated the throne for the woman he loved in 1936). The Stewarts did not want the heavy blond furniture used in many public buildings, and instead they selected furnishings with a combination of Tudor and Jacobean design. It appears that Smith’s English heritage and the architect’s design influenced the Stewarts’ decorating choices.
Helen’s beginning salary was $1,750 per year. Dorothy arranged for her to have a suite of rooms on the first floor of the residence hall, and Helen paid $350 a year for room and board. Student residents paid about the same. Years later, Helen said, “I’ll always remember that R. B. said the reason that he and Dorothy could agree on me [for the position] was that Dorothy thought that I could do the job, and R. B. thought I didn’t know anything about it, so he could tell me how he wanted it done.”
Being a numbers man, Stewart was happy when Helen kept costs at bay. Helen said, “As long as I could report to R. B. that the daily food costs were less than $1.00 for three meals a day, I got along pretty well. The only difference that R.B. and I ever had on residence hall management was about how much had to be set up in reserve … after paying the expenses. My theory was that anything left over should go into social and educational programs within the hall. His theory was that you ought to save more of it. That was our only