On December 11, 1884, Nelle Nichols Peters was born to a farming family in Niagara, North Dakota. She would become one of the most prolific architects in Kansas City during the 1920s and design nearly 1,000 local buildings. Despite the fact that many of these buildings still occupy prominent locations, especially near the Country Club Plaza, Nelle Peters remains one of the more obscure figures in Kansas City history. 

Born Nelle Elizabeth Nichols, she grew up on the North Dakota prairie until the Nichols family moved to Storm Lake, Iowa, in 1899. There she attended Buena Vista College, where she studied mathematics and art. Combining these skills, she attained employment as a draftswoman at the Eisentraut, Colby and Pottenger architectural firm in Sioux City, Iowa. She began to learn about architectural design while earning $3 per week at the firm. 

Nichols came to Kansas City in 1909 when the firm transferred her there. Few developers wanted to hire a female architect in the 1910s, but she did manage to take on some of her own architectural projects outside the firm. In these projects, she demonstrated a talent for designing apartment buildings. In 1911 she married William H. Peters, a Kansas City Terminal Railroad designer, and took the name Nelle Nichols Peters. 

Read the rest of the story at KC History.