New Orleans Architect, Dorothy Hebert

Dorothy Hebert (later Mrs. George W. Pigman) was the inaugural Tulane architectural engineering graduate (1917). As the first woman to be enrolled in drafting courses, she spent her initial year relegated to a drafting table sequestered at the back of the classroom.

Hebert's mother was the granddaughter of John Andrews, who owned Belle Grove Plantation, which the family sold after the Civil War (1868). The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains historic photographs of the structure in a number of its collections: the Boatner Collection, the Hertzberg Collection, and the Walter Cook Keenan Collection.

Image above: "Dorothy Hebert" Yearbook 1917. New Orleans: 1917. Courtesy Tulane University Archives, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.