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Molly Lester

Molly Lester

Associate Director

Urban Heritage Project, University of Pennsylvania

Molly Lester is a historian of the built environment, and currently serves as the Associate Director of the Urban Heritage Project at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. Her research interests include the role of women in shaping the American built environment in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with particular focus on architect Minerva Parker Nichols (1862-1949) and the She-She-She Camps of the New Deal. She is the author of Building Ghosts: Past Lives and Lost Places in a Changing City (Fall 2024, Temple University Press) and the co-author of Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect (2024, distributed by Yale University Press).