Ann Macy Beha '72

Alumnae Achievement Awards 1999

Architect, Preservationist

Ann Macy Beha '72 is founding architect of Ann Beha Associates, a firm renowned for its commitment to historic preservation.

Beha earned her M.Arch. in 1975 from MIT. She stayed there for another two years as assistant to the head of the architecture department before entering practice in Cambridge, Mass. In 1987-88, she was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; in 1977, she founded Ann Beha Associates.

Among her firm's innumerable prominent projects have been a preservation plan for the Massachusetts State House, the restoration of H.H. Richardson's Austin Hall at Harvard Law School, the renovation of Wellesley's French House, the renovation of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the creation of planning studies for the Field Museum in Chicago. Ann also takes pride in her firm's historic-preservation efforts for community buildings such as three Cambridge fire stations and several libraries, places that, she says, "real people actually use . . . every day."

Beha's focus on research sets her work apart: She believes that before instituting change, she must "understand a building's message, what it has been through, its rhythm and proportions." This approach resonates with communities and preservationists across the nation.

Beha has received numerous honors, which include the Historic Neighborhoods Foundation Preservation Award and the Victorian Society in America's Lifetime Achievement Award. She serves on a number of boards, including those of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) and Friends of the (Boston) Public Garden.

Ann and her husband, Robert Radloff, live in Boston with their two daughters.