When I had to sell my house seven years ago, as much of a relief as it was to get out from under that load of responsibility with my credit intact, I would still have been very sad if my loss had not been mitigated by the opportunity to move into an historic building designed in the 1920s by a pioneering woman architect. The barley sugar arches and columns, the stucco, the terra cotta ornamentation made me feel like I was back in the old Kansas City of my childhood — my grandparents’ house, the Plaza theater, the Uptown. It was very comforting.
Nellie Elizabeth Nichols was born in a sod house in North Dakota in 1884. She attended Buena Vista College in Iowa, an unaccredited school which did not grant degrees. She had no formal training in architecture. She did however have a love of math and all things mechanical. She once told a reporter, “When I was a child I preferred to draw mechanical things – anything from a bolt with all its threads to a steam engine.”
She moved to Sioux City, Iowa, determined to find work as an architect. Not surprisingly, no one wanted to hire her. Her persistence finally paid off in 1903 when she was hired by the firm of Eisentrout, Colby, and Pottenger. During her apprenticeship with the firm, she took correspondence courses in architecture to augment her on-the-job training.
In 1907 her employers transferred her to their branch in Kansas City. In 1909 she decided to start her own firm. In 1911 she married William H. Peters, a design engineer for the Kansas City Terminal Railroad. They divorced in 1923.
Large apartment buildings designed around courtyards, incorporating Tudor and Spanish Colonial elements became her signature style.
Nelle Peters was one of the most prolific architects in Kansas City during the 1920s, designing nearly 1000 buildings. Her work also included buildings in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Columbia, Clinton, Boonville, and Jefferson City, Missouri; Nashville, North Carolina; Newark, New Jersey; and Columbus, Ohio.
Sadly her career mostly ended in the 1930s when money for private construction was no longer there. Although she did not retire until 1965, she got few commissions as an architect and even had to take up work as a seamstress at one point to make ends meet. She died in a nursing home in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1974 and is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Kansas City.
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