The Kitchen Sisters Present

A pioneer in her field, Catherine Bauer Wurster was advisor to five presidents on urban planning and housing and was one of the primary authors of the Housing Act of 1937. During the 1930s she wrote the influential book Modern Housing and was one of the leaders of the "housers" movement, advocating for affordable housing for low-income families.  Catherine Bauer’s life divided into two names and two geographies:  her urban east coast youth, and her later life in the Bay Area. She hobnobbed with the bohemian elite of the interwar years….brilliantly charming  the big architect names of the Weimar Republic, Paris cafe society, and the International Style:  Gropius, Mies, Corbusier, Oud, May, and her lover, Lewis Mumford. Her glamour and charismatic presence endeared her to trade unionists, labor leaders, and politicians—who she tried to turn to her vision of housing as a worthy responsibility of the government—sexier and leftier during the Depression. Her arguments were a harder sell in the red scare fifties and