Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect (Yale University Press) is about absence as much as it is about the presence of its protagonist. Organized by the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, the 336-page book of essays and photographs is forensic, collecting things that are ineffable: demolished structures, gaps in a fragmented archive, and a figure missing from the architectural canon.
Slightly older than the much more celebrated architect and engineer Julia Morgan, the first female architect licensed in California, Nichols (1862–1949) is considered the first American woman to establish her own independent architecture practice—a feat accomplished without generational wealth or the financial support of a husband in 1888, a time when professional paths for women were narrow. Although Nichols later married Reverend William Ichabod Nichols, the book opens with a note explaining the editorial decision to refer to the architect as “Minerva” rather than to define her by her married name (moving forward, I’ll do the same), and for clarity: 53 of the 81 known projects she worked on were commissioned before her marriage.