Overlooked No More: Louise Blanchard Bethune, Who Changed the Face of Buffalo. 

From the NY Times

Louise Blanchard Bethune is widely considered to have been the first American woman to become a certified architect, and she left her stamp throughout western New York and in New England. 

Among the architectural greats who contributed to the landscape of Buffalo, N.Y. — among them Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright and Henry Hobson Richardson — there was one person who is lesser known but whose impact in shaping the city was just as important: Louise Blanchard Bethune. Bethune, who is widely considered by historians to have been the first American woman to become a certified architect, designed 18 schools in western New York, as well as factories, hotels, churches, a baseball grandstand and a women’s prison.