Kitty Kaupp · 1998 Honoree

Kitty Kaupp grew up in Tuscola, Illinois, a small town in a flat landscape she calls the “Ukraine of the U.S.” A painfully shy child, Kitty found her outlet in creativity. She coupled her very creative mother’s craft materials with workshop skills learned from her father who was a manual training teacher and coach.

After Kitty earned her B.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, she went to Mexico for an M.F.A. in painting from the University of the Americas. There, she married and had daughter Tatiana, but Kitty gained something else as well. The non-western thought process of Mexico’s indigenous population expanded her way of thinking and her way of looking at things, especially color.

When Kitty returned to the States in 1975, she came to a rowhouse near the Supreme Court. She hoped to teach art, but needed to earn money before accreditation came through. The answer for young Tati’s single-parent mom was real estate. Even today Kitty remembers how good the circumstances were--being in a business and a location where she could run to school or home in an instant; where neighbors, including Supreme Court guards, knew the community’s children and kept an eye on them.

Kitty combines her passion for the special place called Capitol Hill and her fervent belief that everyone should be able to enjoy a positive aesthetic. Her home is her starting point; its ambiance gains favorable press for the Hill, and events there have helped Hill charities. Kitty, often acting with others, conquers a host of larger publicly visual “problems.” The “visualizer” of Stanton Development, she identifies real estate and conceptualizes projects to enhance our streetscapes. Then she, Ken Golden, the money worrier, and Frank Reed, trouble shooter and lawyer, with the designs of Amy Weinstein, make the dreams reality. From her desk at Pardoe, Kitty organizes our annual array of snowflakes and recently partnered in the donation of empty lots so the GreenHOME project of Habitat for Humanity could build new houses.

Kitty Kaupp looks at the world with two sets of eyes. At the same time she sees the real, she envisions the possible. Her commitment is to enhance everyone’s life by transforming the real into the possible, by making Capitol Hill look better. Since 1975 Kitty Kaupp has done exactly that.