Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect

The curators behind the groundbreaking new book Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect share the untold story of America’s first independent female architect. An exclusive in-person presentation of photographic prints made for the book is followed by a reception with the authors.

Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect is distributed by Yale University Press and available to order now. The book will also be available for purchase at the event.
 

About the Book

Minerva Parker Nichols (1862–1949) was the first American woman to practice architecture independently. Her specialty was residential spaces—though her commissions also included an iron foundry and a macaroni factory—and she was a significant figure in the design of the emerging railroad towns just outside of Philadelphia, where she was in active practice from 1883 until 1896. She was also a writer, teacher, and active participant in several reform movements of the era. Creating an archive in the absence of one, this book recovers Nichols’s forgotten story to document a career that spanned seven decades, engaging with contemporary questions about absences in the historical record, the challenges of architectural history and preservation, and the need for new tools and frameworks to address these gaps. A catalogue raisonné of her completed architectural works includes illustrations drawn from historical materials as well as newly drawn plans for five of her most significant designs. Archival material, paired with new photography documenting more than 30 extant buildings in the Philadelphia and beyond, offer a full and fully illustrated reconstruction of Nichols’s life and career.
 

About the Speakers

Elizabeth Felicella is a New York-based architectural photographer. She photographs architecture and landscape with particular interests in public space and preservation. She works on assignments for designers and on long-term research projects which include a catalog of New York City’s branch libraries, a survey of the city’s shoreline, and an atlas of the periphery of Kennedy Airport. The treatment of photography as information through presentation and installation is a central aspect of her artistic practice. She previously collaborated with the Architectural Archives at Penn on the exhibition Shofuso and Modernism and the accompanying book, Uncrating the Japanese House.

Margaret (Molly) Lester is the associate director of the Urban Heritage Project at Weitzman. In addition to her role with the Urban Heritage Project, she has been researching architect Minerva Parker Nichols for over a decade. As part of that project, she was a guest curator for the exhibit Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect, organized by the Architectural Archives at Penn and supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Lester was also a 2019/2020 Fellow for the James Marston Fitch Foundation, for which she produced a multi-media project about Minerva, and a 2020/2021 grantee of the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation for her ongoing Building Ghosts project. She holds a Master of Science in Historic Preservation from Penn and a Bachelor of Architectural History from the University of Virginia.

Heather Isbell Schumacher is archivist of the Architectural Archives at Penn. She oversees stewardship and access for more than 400 design-related collections, including those of Louis I. Kahn, Ian McHarg, Venturi Scott Brown, Lawrence Halprin, and Anne Tyng. Schumacher received her master’s degree in public history from Temple University in 2010. She served as co-curator of Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect and editor for the accompanying publication. She is particularly interested in the gaps, absences, and silences found in archival collections, and investigating new ways of approaching the stories of marginalized individuals and communities.

William Whitaker is curator of the Architectural Archives at Penn. He is coauthor (with George Marcus) of The Houses of Louis Kahn and Uncrating the Japanese House: Junzo Yoshimura, Antonin and Noemi Raymond, and George Nakashima (with Yuka Yokoyama). Trained as an architect at Penn and the University of New Mexico, Whitaker works closely with the archival collections of Louis I. Kahn, Lawrence Halprin, and the partnership of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in support of teaching, scholarship, preservation, and public engagement. He has co-curated over 40 exhibitions including Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry (Graham Foundation and Penn’s ICA), and Design With Nature Now (with the McHarg Center), a major program of exhibitions, conference, and public programs that highlight the dynamic and visionary approaches to landscape design and development in the face of climate change and global urbanization. Most recently her served as project director for Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect.

Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect, and the accompanying publication, was supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

If you require any accessibility accommodation, such as live captioning, audio description, or a sign language interpreter, please email news@design.upenn.edu. Please note, we require at least five (5) business days’ notice.