Among many awards Robert Traynham Coles received over his lifetime, our Chapter has given him our most prestigious honors, such as the Louise Bethune Award, the Diversity Award, and the James William Kideney Award through the New York State AIA.
Louise Bethune
Louise Blanchard Bethune was the first woman to practice as a professional architect in the United States. She participated in the design of approximately 180 buildings in the Buffalo and New England areas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first woman member of the AIA and the first woman to be honored as an AIA Fellow, Bethune founded the AIA Buffalo/ Western New York Chapter.