[4][5] She mainly designed houses, with conveniently planned interiors, and a few institutional buildings and an exhibition stand at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

In order to gain experience, she used an inheritance from her father to build a small cottage in Pacific Grove with the help of metal artist Lillian McNeill Palmer.

Williams' first client was her older sister, Edith, who believed in Emily's abilities and commissioned three cottages on adjacent lots as income property.

Further commissions came from acquaintances of the Williams family and feminists such as Dr. Anna Lukens who wanted to avoid the harsh winters of New York and spend time in mild California.

Around 1914, Williams received a most unusual commission for an exhibition stand for the Alaska Garnet Mining and Manufacturing Company which was owned and run by twelve women from St. Paul, Minnesota.

The first, in 1907, was from the Woman’s Civic Club to design a public “Look-Out” on a rocky promontory in the Pacific Ocean called Lovers Point.

[22] Emily received only a few commissions but built their own home at 1037 Broadway and a weekend cabin “Wake Robins” in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

They lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains during the Great Depression while they rented out their San Francisco and Los Gatos houses for income.

She used the Club’s newsletter The Business Woman for an advertisement geared especially to women:[25] Despite these networking efforts, Emily received only a few commissions in the early 1920s, and appears to have stopped working as an architect in 1924.

[26][27] She was eulogized by a moving obituary, probably written by her partner Lillian: Death Wednesday morning, June 3, brought to a close the colorful life and career of Miss Emily E. Williams, beloved clubwoman and Los Gatos resident whose girlhood determination to establish women's rights in the business world led to personal success as an architect and gave inspiration to all women careerists.... With her death is also severed a "life-partnership" with Miss Lillian Palmer, whose own similar ideals concerning women's rights first aligned the two women together and formed the basis for a friendship of forty-four years duration....[26][27]An article published in the San Jose Mercury Herald on November 11, 1906, stated: "Miss Williams' houses have won her an enviable reputation...