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Woman sitting on her living room sofa, 1920s; the room also includes a coffee table, a chair, lamps, paintings, and a houseplant.

Vintage Photos Show What Living Rooms Looked Like Before TV

Photos reveal how people structured their living rooms before the television became widespread.
via Vintage Everyday on November 23, 2021
Collage with a woman pointing to a midcentury modern chair

Instagram’s Favorite Furniture Style Has an Uncomfortable History

How we sit isn’t the only thing midcentury modernism sought to control.
by Rebecca Onion, Kristina Wilson via Slate on April 30, 2021

Closet Archive

A stuffed history of the closet, where the “past becomes space.”
by Shannon Mattern via Places Journal on July 1, 2017

Furniture of the Future: Victorian New York’s Most Visionary Designer Loved His Machines

Barry R. Harwood says of George Hunzinger's work, “No one else was doing this. They didn’t have a name for it yet.”
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford via Collectors Weekly on June 7, 2017
Cartoon of California and Colorado talking about suburban housing.

Orange County, Colorado

How a California homebuilder remade the Interior West.
by Caroline Tracey via New York Review Of Architecture on February 19, 2024
The Trubek and Wislocki Houses, 1970, Nantucket, Massachusetts, by Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi.

The Historian’s Revenge

The rise and fall of the Shingle Style ideal.
by Witold Rybczynski via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023
Coffee table with books

A Brief History of Coffee Table Books: Origin, Precursors, and Popularity

Ever look at the tome on a coffee table and wonder why coffee table books are a thing? Consider this brief history of coffee table books.
by Addison Rizer via Book Riot on April 13, 2021
White House staff vacuuming

The Secret Life of the White House

The residence staff, many of whom have worked there for decades, balance their service of the First Family with their long-term loyalty to the house itself.
by Susannah Jacob via The New Yorker on February 24, 2021
The Oval Office as redecorated for President Biden

A Look Inside Biden’s Oval Office

The oval office looks different now that President Biden is its occupant.
by Annie Linskey via Washington Post on January 20, 2021
Caricature of Oscar Wilde in between a sunflower in a vase with the U.S. dollar symbol on it, and a lion with sunflower petals for a mane.

The Wilde Woman and the Sunflower Apostle: Oscar Wilde in the United States

Victoria Dailey looks back at Oscar Wilde’s wild ride through the United States in the early 1880s.
by Victoria Dailey via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 8, 2020

Pornotopia

In the mid-20th century, Playboy wasn't just an erotic magazine. It was an architectural movement as well.
by Paul B. Preciado via Public Books on October 11, 2019
Finely decorated women's restroom lounge

The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge

Separate areas with sofas, vanities, and even writing tables used to put the “rest” in women’s restrooms. Why were these spaces built, and why did they vanish?
by Elizabeth Yuko via CityLab on December 3, 2018

How Restaurants Got So Loud

Fashionable minimalism replaced plush opulence. That’s a recipe for commotion.
by Kate Wagner via The Atlantic on November 27, 2018

The Curse of an Open Floor Plan

The flowing, connected interior has become ubiquitous, and beloved. But it promises a liberation from housework that remains a fantasy.
by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on May 17, 2018

Prison Cells and Pretty Walls

Gender coding and American schools.
by Jennifer Borgioli Binis via Nursing Clio on May 3, 2018
Vintage print of the Guggenheim Museum

Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern American Architecture

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Ella Howard via Digital Public Library of America on February 28, 2018
Victorian couple courting with a church steeple in the background

Victorian Era

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
by Tona Hangen via Digital Public Library of America on February 28, 2018

How a Library Handles a Rare and Deadly Book of Wallpaper Samples

The arsenic-laden pages of "Shadows from the Walls of Death" should not be touched without gloves.
by Alexander J. Zawacki via Atlas Obscura on January 23, 2018
Two Papasan chairs

Tracing the Elusive History of Pier 1's Ubiquitous 'Papasan' Chair

The bowl-shaped seat's conflicted heritage incorporates the Vietnam War.
by John Kelly via Atlas Obscura on July 17, 2017
Child's Restaurant dining room.

How the Pioneering Childs Restaurant Chain Built an Empire Based on Food Safety and Hygiene

Victorian diners loved white tile, too.
by Elizabeth Yuko via CityLab on February 3, 2016
Illustration of a wood-paneled formal bathroom.

The Bathrooms of Old New York

On the enormous, ornate, and extremely impractical bathtub in his family’s old-fashioned brownstone home.
by Joseph Wyler via The New Yorker on January 21, 1939
Whitehall, designed by Carrère & Hastings for Henry Morrison Flagler, 1902.

Building Palm Beach

On the town’s history & architecture.
by Benjamin Riley via The New Criterion on May 22, 2024
Abraham Lincoln campaigning with the Wide Awakes.

The Club of Cape-Wearing Activists Who Helped Elect Lincoln—and Spark the Civil War

The untold story of the Wide Awakes, the young Americans who took up the torch for their antislavery cause and stirred the nation.
by Jon Grinspan via Smithsonian on April 1, 2024
Man spinning record player with woman in the background

Making Music Male

How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?
by Ashawnta Jackson, Roy Shuker, Keir Keightley via JSTOR Daily on July 24, 2023
Exchange Coffee House illustration

The First American Hotels

In the eighteenth century, if people in British North America had to travel, they stayed at public houses that were often just repurposed private homes.
by Livia Gershon, Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz via JSTOR Daily on May 26, 2023
Billionaire Charlie Munger and the UCSB dorm "Charlie's Vision"

California’s Hell Dorm Is What Happens When You Outsource Public Space to Billionaires

You get no windows. You take what you can get.
by Alexander Luckmann via Slate on November 2, 2021
Cartoon drawing of a shopkeeper in front of a dairy shop.

How Dairy Lunchrooms Became Alternatives to the NYC Saloon ‘Free Lunch.’

Ben Katchor's Brief History of the Dairy Restaurant.
by Ben Katchor via Literary Hub on March 10, 2020
An illustration from a book of homes published by a Pennsylvania lumber company in 1920

The Latent Racism of the Better Homes in America Program

How Better Homes in America—a collaboration between Herbert Hoover and the editor of a conservative women’s magazine—promoted idealized whiteness.
by Manisha Claire via JSTOR Daily on February 26, 2020

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