A new exhibit at the Penn Architectural Archives recovers the story of a 19th-century architect named Minerva Parker Nichols, one of the country’s first woman architects:
This is the first time ever that Minerva’s story will be stitched back together and displayed for contemporary audiences.Born in Illinois, Nichols was raised by her mother after her father died in 1863 fighting for the Union Army. She learned to draw from her grandfather, who was a builder originally from Massachusetts. Her mother later remarried and moved with Minerva and her sister Adelaide to Philadelphia in 1876.
In 1894, she designed a building for the Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Mass. From 1891-1895, she taught architecture and historic ornament at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, now the Moore College of Art and Design. She summed up her aesthetic in a few basic rules: “A building must not only be strong, but have the appearance of repose” and “the science of harmony is never monotony. A single note never can produce discord, yet it is not harmony.”
In addition to designing buildings, Nichols supervised the construction of her designs—all the while dressed in a corset, in accordance with the social mores of the day. Despite restrictive ideas of women’s roles and capacities at the time, Nichols earned the respect of male builders.“She’s the most particular and knowing person to work for,” one tradesman remarked. “She knows every brick and just where it ought to go,” another told a reporter.
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