Mary E. Dillon
Born1886
Coney Island, New York
Died20 October 1983
Honolulu, Hawaii
NationalityAmerican
Other namesMrs Henry Farber
EmployerBrooklyn Borough Gas Company
SpouseHenry Farber

Mary E. Dillon (1886 – 20 October 1983) was an American businesswoman and president of Brooklyn Borough Gas Company. She was the first female president of any utility company in the world.

Biography

Dillon was born in Coney Island, Brooklyn, one of 12 children. Dillon left Erasmus Hall High School in her senior year when she needed to replace her sister in her job at the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company in 1903 because of her family's limited income. She was 17 and started as a junior clerk. She was promoted within three years to office manager and went on to become general manager and vice president. In 1926, she was named president and chairman.[1] She was the first woman to be the president of a utility.[2]

In the early 1920s, Dillion joined the British Women's Engineering Society (WES) and the Electrical Association for Women, at the time the only such organisations in the world. She paid them a visit in London in 1925.[1]

In the late 1920s, Dillon collaborated with another American member, Dr. Lillian Gilbreth, a leading expert in time and motion studies, on the creation of an efficient kitchen, equipped with gas powered appliances and named the "Kitchen Practical".[3] Inspired by Dillon's criticisms of her own kitchen, it was designed on three principles: the correct and uniform height of working surfaces, a circular work place and a general "circular routing of working", all carefully analysed to reduce the time and effort required in the preparation of meals.[4] It was unveiled in 1929 at a Women’s Exposition and formed the basis for Gilbraith's development of kitchen design principles which still underlie much of kitchen planning today.[3]

Working in the Coney Island area, Dillon was also on the local school board. She was appointed to the Board of Education by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in 1942 and was the first woman president of the board from 1944 to 1946. She was on the governing committee of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences as well as a director of the Brooklyn and Coney Island Chambers of Commerce. During the Great Depression, in 1934, Dillon organised the Summer Portable Theater, known as the "theater on wheels". Dillon was also on the Mayor's Business Advisory Council and the War Council of the City of New York.[2]

Dillon married Henry Farber in 1923 but always used her own name.[5] Farber died in 1948. Dillon retired in 1949 and moved to Vermont until 1973 when she moved to Hawaii where she lived for the rest of her life.[2][6]

References and sources

  1. ^ a b "News from America". The Woman Engineer. 2 (1). London: Women's Engineering Society: 11. December 1924. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
  2. ^ a b c Walter H. Waggoner (18 November 1983). "MARY E. DILLON, 93, EX-HEAD OF CITY'S BOARD OF EDUCATION". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
    - Morris, Suzanne Spellen (aka Montrose) (3 July 2014). "Miss Dillon's Gas Company". Brownstoner. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  3. ^ a b Lange, Alexandra (25 October 2012). "Why Your Kitchen Looks the Way It Looks". Slate. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
  4. ^ "The Kitchen Practical". The Woman Engineer. 3 (13). London: Women's Engineering Society: 197. December 1932. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
  5. ^ Greenfield, Rachel (2019). "Exemplary Entrepreneurs? The Public Image of Two of New York State's Female Business Leaders, 1915–1935". New York History. 100 (2): 228–245. doi:10.1353/nyh.2019.0026. ISSN 2328-8132. S2CID 216687475.
  6. ^ "WOMAN PRESIDENT OF UTILITY RETIRES; Mary E. Dillon Also Was First Feminine Head of City's Board of Education". The New York Times. 17 March 1949. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
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