During her two-year hiatus from school, she worked in Detroit, Michigan, as the Dodge Brothers Company's first woman draughtsperson.
[6] She settled in Evanston, Illinois, and during a career spanning six decades designed more than 50 residences as well as apartment buildings, schools, and churches.
[3][4][6] She worked mostly around Evanston, Glencoe, and Chicago, but she also designed buildings in the states of Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
To better support her children, she got a job with the state of Illinois as a social worker, but within a few years had moved over to remodeling offices for government buildings.
[6] Whitman valued house plans that made efficient use of space and were oriented towards the needs of daily domestic life, and she took pride in the fact that they were sturdy and well engineered.
[1] Whitman liked to travel to study world architectural styles, and over the course of her lifetime visited countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia.