Dr. Maria Nye Johnson

Address unknown, San Francisco, CA

1892 | Residence | Not Built

“…Also, furnishing drawings for a dwelling for Dr. M.N. Johnson, of San Francisco, Cal.” (June 29, 1892)

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Dr. Maria Nye Johnson’s life path echoed Minerva’s in many ways (and places), beginning with her early years in Peoria County, Illinois (where Minerva was born). Their paths aligned again in the 1880s, when they both lived on Green Street in Philadelphia. By this time, Maria was a physician—she entered the profession relatively early for a woman in the United States. (The seed for this work may have been planted during or before the Chicago fire of 1871, because she apparently provided medical assistance during the blaze.)

She commissioned the house from Minerva in 1892, but research to date has not been able to determine where it might have been—or if it was even built, in San Francisco or otherwise. Maria Nye Johnson lived a rather nomadic life for many decades, and she may not have put down enough roots to actually see Minerva’s building to completion. She popped up on both coasts at various points in the 1880s and 1890s, and when her son divorced in 1898 (just as she had done in 1880), she seems to have gotten tangled in his relationships and household. This may be an unrealized project in Minerva’s portfolio, but it is another example of an unmarried professional woman commissioning a building from her.

- Research by Elizabeth Sexton