I. Her time at the bank was mostly concerned with real estate and construction projects. She helped launch eight companies, including a housing project in East Rochester named the Concrest Community. At Concrest, she began experimenting with concrete to build fireproof houses at an affordable cost, using a pouring method she developed and mass production methods learned from the Gleason Works. The Concrest homes were sold for a price of no more than $4,000. In the 1920s, Gleason traveled from Rochester for business opportunities in France, South Carolina, and California. She purchased and rebuilt a castle in Septmonts and built a library and movie theater in the town to commemorate the AEF. During this time period she also toured California to study adobe buildings. In 1924, she was consulted by the city of Berkeley, California, to help rebuild after a fire. In the late 1920s she began to build more poured concrete buildings in Sausalito, California, but the project was not as successful as her buildings in Rochester. At her winter home in Beaufort, South Carolina, she had plans to build a community of garden apartments for artists and writers, although only ten of these homes were completed at the time of her death. Personal life Ellen Gleason was a friend of fellow Rochesterian Susan B. Anthony, and Kate Gleason later cited Anthony as a source of advice on business and publicity. Gleason hosted Anthony for her 86th birthday in 1906, shortly before her death. Gleason was later a strong supporter of women's suffrage. In 1912, she pledged $1,200 to the National America Woman Suffrage Association, one of the largest pledges it received. Many of her personal writings testify to her and her father's contributions to women's suffrage. Gleason pursued a number of philanthropic interests in the 1920s, making large donations to orphanages, libraries, and schools. In 1929, she donated a large property to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Gleason viewed marriage as a hindrance to her professional life and she never married nor had children. Death and legacy In 1913, Gleason became the first woman elected to membership in the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure. The following year, she became the first woman elected to membership in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, followed shortly after by Lydia Weld. Gleason represented the society at the World Conference on Power in Germany in 1930. For her work in construction, she also became