Background
Born in New York City to an affluent family descended from leading figures in the American Revolution, Stevens attended Smith College, where she received a degree in philosophy in 1949.
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Mary Stevens
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Career
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum calls her “one of the most important female architects in the Northeast during the 1960s and 1970s”. She was active in the civil rights movement during her undergraduate years, presaging a lifelong commitment to social and civic activism. Stevens entered the architecture program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1953, graduating with an SBArch in 1956.
Stevens is best known for the Lincoln House (1965), which she designed with Tom McNulty for their own family on a rural site in Lincoln, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
Stevens lived in the house until 1978, when she and McNulty sold it to Sarah Caldwell, the renowned opera director The house was widely published, but was demolished in 2001 after Caldwell sold the property.
Milan Triennale, 1968 (with McNulty and Gyorgy Kepes) Torf House, Weston, Massachusetts Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center, Vienna, Virginia (1980s) World of Variation, Mary Otis Stevens and Thomas F. McNulty, G. Braziler, 1970. Stevens was also featured in Season 9 (1980) of the television series “This Old House” for her work on the Weatherbee House (“the Westwood House”).
After the death of Jesse Fillman in 1991, a lawyer whom she married in 1978, Stevens disbanded Design Guild to pursue studies in music composition at Longy School of Music.
In 2007, she donated her archives to Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
