![]() ![]() At a time when women had little influence on broader society, the clubs provided a space for women to organize social reform campaigns to advance suffrage, women’s and girls’ education, improved labor conditions, dress reform and more. Nichols’ two women’s club buildings in Philadelphia and Wilmington served as staging grounds for women’s social, literary and political gatherings. Nichols designed the building to house suffragists visiting Philadelphia. For example, Nichols designed a house for Rachel Foster Avery, a prominent suffragist and close confidante of Susan B. Many of Nichols’ clients came from the growing number of educated women, graduating from newly-formed women’s colleges, and who were pushing the limits set by the male-dominated society of their day. A contractor said he “had never worked for an architect who better understood the business,” while another said, “she knows not only her business, but mine, too.” ![]() “There’s no cheating her by smuggling in knotty lumber and leaving the joists sticking out into the chimneys,” said another builder. “She knows every brick and just where it ought to go,” another told a reporter. “She’s the most particular and knowing person to work for,” one tradesman remarked. Watercolor of Minerva Parker Nichols by Robert Lawson, c. Despite restrictive ideas of women’s roles and capacities at the time, Nichols earned the respect of male builders. 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. ![]() In 1890 alone, readers worldwide saw her name at least 240 times, including 11 mentions in separate newspapers on a single day (April 10, 1890). In the eight years she maintained her independent practice in Philadelphia (1888-1896), her name appeared in 606 newspaper articles in 44 states and eight different countries, including New Zealand, Jamaica and France. She also received widespread recognition for her work. At the peak of her career in 1891, when she was just 29 years old, she earned approximately $6,000-the equivalent of about $200,000 annually in today’s dollars. A single note never can produce discord, yet it is not harmony.” 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. She encouraged her clients to stamp their own individuality on their house design and urged, “Don’t be afraid of light and air: They are that things that do most to beautify our homes.” She focused on the impact of architecture on the people who would inhabit her buildings, including children-“don’t have a house so dainty, or so fine, that there is no place for children”-and workers-“it seems an unnecessary humiliation to lock a store-room door.” She prioritized “reducing household labor to a minimum” (her own words) by, for example, minimizing intricate woodwork that would need to be dusted. Nichols brought her experiences as a woman, servant and caretaker of children to her designs. 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. In 1894, she designed a building for the Browne & Nichols School in Cambridge, Mass. In 1889, she completed a certificate at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts.īetween 18, Nichols had over 60 commissions, which were primarily dwellings but also included two spaghetti factories, a building for the Philadelphia New Century Club in 1891, a women’s pavilion for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and a building for the Wilmington New Century Club in 1893 in Delaware. Thorne, taking over his office when he departed in 1888-making Nichols the first independently practicing female architect in the United States. She joined the architectural firm of Edwin W. In 1880, she enrolled at the Philadelphia Normal Art School, graduating in 1882, and then completed a two-year course in architectural drawing at the Franklin Institute Drawing School in 1886. But she sought better paying work to support her family. The family ran a boarding house, and Minerva also worked as a servant for the family of a wholesale grocer to make ends meet. But her stepfather soon died, leaving her mother pregnant and again having to fend for herself and her three young children. Her mother later remarried and moved with Minerva and her sister Adelaide to Philadelphia in 1876. She learned to draw from her grandfather, who was a builder originally from Massachusetts. A post shared by □ Molly Lester in Illinois, Nichols was raised by her mother after her father died in 1863 fighting for the Union Army.
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