Michael Bixler is the Editorial Director and Chief Photographer of Hidden City Philadelphia.

"Beyond their need to document building ghosts, Bixler's photos are often astutely composed to convey narratives.... Lester's research brings to light the developers and construction workers who built the city's row houses in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as well as the succession of nearly anonymous working-class Philadelphians who inhabited the buildings that have been wiped away.... Through Building Ghosts, they encourage us...to better understand the city, its residents past and present, and our successes and failures as stewards of the post-industrial environment we have inherited."--Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies

"Molly Lester and Michael Bixler spent the pandemic hunting ghosts. In Building Ghosts, they make a compelling case for visiting sights that aren't on any 'must see' list.... By capturing images and details of structures' interior lives--the sawtooth silhouette of a missing staircase, the outline of a lost bedroom closet, the hint of an absent fireplace--Building Ghosts grasps the last wisps of a history we barely know. The memories, if not the buildings themselves, are surely worth preserving."-- Broad Street Review

"Building Ghosts gives us an accessible new language to critically analyze urban spaces. Shifting the focus of architectural history from the 'canonical' to the vernacular--and examining what remains when everyday apartment buildings and homes are destroyed--Lester and Bixler deepen our understanding of the communities impacted by the often-prejudiced forces of redevelopment and 'renewal.' Detailed and vivid vignettes make this history immediate and relatable, teaching us to recognize these ghosts in our own communities and to see them as poignant symbols of loss-- and sites for reparative opportunity."--Adam Paul Susaneck, Founder of Segregation by Design: An Evolving Atlas of Spatial Injustice

"Molly Lester and Michael Bixler mine the crevices and seams of Philadelphia's rowhouse blocks for signs and stories of the past. The surprising result of their effort is a collection of short essays and photos that reads like an alternative history of the city. In Building Ghosts, the walls really do get to speak."--Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize-winning Philadelphia Inquirer Architecture Critic

"Building Ghosts offers a layered, nuanced, and meaningful study of Philadelphia's built environment, inside and out. Author Molly Lester and photographer Michael Bixler push us to reconsider the long-standing imprint of our city's iconic rowhomes and what happens as people and places experience shockwaves of growth and divestment. By reading in-between spaces as evocative and informative, this book drives home the ways memory lives with us."--Paul M. Farber, Director of Monument Lab

"By documenting and analyzing the tangible artifacts of the intangible forces of urban change, this ground-breaking, rigorously researched, and visually compelling study has the potential to empower readers to understand and influence those forces, to leave their own marks on cities and communities, beyond the traces of building ghosts.""--The Journal of Urban Affairs