By Spencer Bowman, Northwest Room Librarian
In 1950s Tacoma, two women were locally reshaping the way people lived and interacted with built environments and interiors. Frances W. Grafton, a designer, filled homes with color and personality, while Mary Lund Davis, an architect, reimagined the structures themselves. Together, they proved that design in the Pacific Northwest could be as fresh, bold, and modern as anywhere in the country during the 1940s and 1950s.
Frances W. Grafton
Frances W. Grafton’s career was built on the belief that a home should reflect the people who live in it. “A home should be assembled in a way that the decorative scheme expresses only the personalities of the persons to whom it belongs,” she said in a Tacoma News Tribune article. That philosophy guided her work across Tacoma. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Grafton studied at Rockford College and the University of Minnesota, where she earned her B.S. degree. She continued her education with postgraduate work at the College of Puget Sound and later at the Art Institute of Chicago.
There she embraced modern approaches to materials and design, creating furniture that was later produced commercially in Tacoma. Her work at W.P. Fuller & Co. showcased her ability to balance beauty with practicality. She designed interiors with novel wallpapers, polished metal fixtures, and layouts that made household management easier. She also planned the color schemes for eleven houses on Steilacoom Lake, a project she described as “the most exciting community project I have worked on." By 1952, Grafton was chairing the newly formed Pacific Northwest chapter of the American Institute of Decorators. Outside of working at Fuller & Co., she worked from an office in the W.R. Rust Building, modernized the Arthur Murray Dance Studios, and commissioned strikingly modern furniture photographed by Richards Studio. Her love of color, her focus on livability and practicality, and her insistence on personal expression made her one of Tacoma’s unique female designers at that time.
Mary Lund Davis
While Grafton was shaping interiors, Mary Lund Davis was breaking barriers in architecture. Born in Sacramento in 1922, she grew up sketching houses with her father, a San Francisco builder who told her, “Women are capable of doing anything a man can do.” She entered the University of Washington’s School of Architecture in 1942. By graduation, she was not only the first woman in her class, she was also the only student left after the men had gone off to war. In the 1950s, Davis became the only woman member of the Tacoma Society of Architects and later the sole female member of the Southwest Washington chapter of the AIA.
Her own Fircrest home embodied her principles. It was a “minimum house” designed to reduce upkeep and maximize livability, with open spaces, clever cabinet partitions, and colors that blended seamlessly with the surrounding Madrona trees. Her designs reached the public through affordable house plans distributed by the AIA. One notable plan solved the challenge of building on sloping lots by elevating the ground floor and integrating a carport with a trellis of beams. She also collaborated with Donald Burr on a residence overlooking American Lake, where sliding glass panels opened the living room to the water and an art studio completed the design. Recognition soon followed. In 1963 and 1964, Davis won a Western Home Award, sponsored by Sunset Magazine and the AIA, for a prefabricated house praised for its simplicity and low cost. She went on to design homes across Tacoma, Parkland, Port Angeles, and Gig Harbor, some inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s design principles. Davis passed away in 2008, but her legacy endures. To learn more about some of the houses she designed click here to visit a link to the Buildings Index.
Frances W. Grafton and Mary Lund Davis worked in different spheres, one in interiors and the other in architecture, but together they helped express a modern new Pacific Northwest mid‑century design identity. Grafton brought new ways to use color and personality into homes, while Davis designed structures for people with fresh new ideas.
If you are interested in learning more about these two women, please visit the Northwest Room as well as these online links below.
See these links below for more information on Mary Lund Davis,
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Mary Lund Davis on Docomomo Wewa
- Docomomo WEWA (Western Washington) is the Western Washington chapter of Docomomo US, a nonprofit dedicated to the documentation and conservation of Modernist architecture. Lean about the buildings she designed complete with color photographs.
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USModernist Archives - Mary L. Davis
- America’s largest open digital archive of Modernist residential architecture. It’s a nonprofit that documents, preserves, and promotes mid‑century and contemporary Modernist houses. Read the page devoted to Mary Lund Davis.
Sources:
-Francis Grafton
“Decorators Chapter for Northwest” Tacoma News Tribune 11/2/1952 p.47
“W.P. Fuller & Co.” Tacoma News Tribune 11/8/1942 p.10
“Unusual Housing Group Completed” Tacoma News Tribune 11/24/1940 p.10A
Click here to see ORCA records associated with Frances Grafton.
-Mary Lund Davis
“Mary L. Davis Designs Home for the Public" Tacoma News Tribune 6/24/2025 p.39
“Home Plan Includes Art Studio, Lake View” Tacoma News Tribune 12/29/1957 p.38
"Fantastic Homes Opens Offices, Model House" Tacoma News Tribune 3/11/1962 p.51
"Mary Lund Davis [Obituary]" Tacoma News Tribune 6/22/2008 p.B4
“Suburban FHA Loans Available” Tacoma News Tribune 2/28/1965 p.14
