Margaret Van Pelt Vilas

Margaret Van Pelt Vilas (1905–1995) was an architect active in New York City and New Haven, Connecticut beginning in the 1930s through the 1960s.

Education Margaret Van Pelt was born in Ithaca, New York on January 26, 1905 to John Vredenburgh Van Pelt and Betsey Southworth.

She attended Vassar College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1925, and then obtained a Bachelor of Architecture from Columbia University in 1928 and subsequently a Master of Architecture from MIT in 1930. In 1930, she traveled throughout Europe for a year, where she was impressed and inspired by the prolific use of glass and metal, particularly in Germany.

She began working for the Connecticut-based office of Douglas Orr in 1946, remaining there for twelve years until 1958, when she established her own firm based in New Haven, Connecticut. By 1962, she was a registered architect in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, and had completed residential, commercial, and educational projects throughout the United States. Vilas worked in the printing industry for Paper Mills of Chicago, and the two became avid sailors. Their daughter Diana Van Pelt Vilas born in March 1939.

She died in 1995, at the age of 90, in New Haven, CT.

Seaman's Church Institute, New York City, ground floor renovation (1959)

Warren Prize, Beaux Arts Institute of Design, 1930

Henry Adams Prize, B.A.LD, 1928

Publications Illustrations in "From Here to There... With Nothing But the Wind," by Charles H. Vila, in Cruising World. Vol. 1, No. 6 (1975): 42-46.

Illustrations in "Triple Roller Headsails," by Charles H. Vila, in The Best Of Sail Trim