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Architectural rendering of a bridge.

The True Measure of Robert Moses (and His Racist Bridges)

Did Robert Moses ordered engineers to build the Southern State Parkway’s bridges extra-low, to prevent poor people in buses from them? The truth is complex.
by Thomas J. Campanella via CityLab on July 9, 2017
Washington D.C. in 1860.

Draining the Swamp

Washington may be the only city on Earth that lobbied itself into existence.
by Ted Widmer via The New Yorker on January 19, 2017

How the Battle for Sunlight Shaped New York City

As the city reached for the sky, those down below had to scramble for daylight.
by Laura Bliss via CityLab on December 18, 2016
Artists' rendering of Cahokia mounds with buildings and people on them.

Finding North America’s Lost Medieval City

Cahokia was bigger than Paris — then it was completely abandoned. I went there to find out why.
by Annalee Newitz via Ars Technica on December 13, 2016

Central Park Was Once Seneca Village, Home to a Thriving Free Black Community

A graphic history of the community displaced for the vast public park in 1857.
by Lucas Adams via Atlas Obscura on December 5, 2016

How Bikes Helped Invent American Highways

Urban elites with a fancy hobby teamed up with rural farmers in a movement that transformed the country.
by Margaret Guroff via What It Means to Be American on September 6, 2016

When Parks Were Radical

More than 150 years ago, Frederick Law Olmsted changed how Americans think of public space.
by Nathaniel Rich via The Atlantic on September 1, 2016

The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America

It’s known as a modern-day hub of progressivism, but its past is one of exclusion.  
by Alana Semuels via The Atlantic on July 22, 2016
Aerial view of Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California.

Why Are America’s Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia?

Suburban corporate campuses have isolated themselves by design from the communities their products were supposed to impact.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford via Collectors Weekly on April 8, 2016
Roof spotter looking at New York City skyline
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Route Cause

On the 1870s skirmish between John D. Rockefeller and the upstart competitors who built the country’s first long-distance oil pipeline.
via BackStory on June 5, 2015
Scientists attend to banks of monitors at NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston in 1965.

Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard

Futuristic control rooms with endless screens of blinking data are proliferating in cities across the globe. Welcome to the age of Dashboard Governance.
by Shannon Mattern via Places Journal on March 1, 2015

A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash

How garbage physically shaped the development of New York.
by Hunter Oatman-Stanford, Robin Nagle via Collectors Weekly on June 24, 2013

Reimagining Recreation

How the New Left, urban renewal, safety concerns, and child psychology affected the design of New York playgrounds.
by James Trainor via Cabinet on April 18, 2012

That World Is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town

The story of Vinegar Hill, a historically African American neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia.
via Field Studio on May 9, 2011

The Strange and Wonderful Subcultures of 1960s New York

From slum clearance to beatnik protests, how Greenwich Village became a battleground over race, art, and redevelopment.
by J. Hoberman via Jacobin on July 19, 2025
A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.
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The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.
by Justin Hawkins via Made By History on January 31, 2025

The World of Tomorrow

When the future arrived, it felt…ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
by Virginia Postrel via Works In Progress on December 5, 2024
The Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village.

How Greenwich Village’s Iconic, Iconoclastic Music Scene Came to Be

Max Gordon, Prohibition, and the transformative creation of the Village Vanguard.
by David Browne via Literary Hub on September 18, 2024
A klaxon car horn.

A Loud Warning From the Past About Living With Cars

Klaxon horns, once standard safety equipment, disappeared from the roads after World War I. But the tensions they exposed about urban noise still echo.
by David Zipper, Matthew F. Jordan via CityLab on August 26, 2024
A drawing of a city skyline filled with skyscrapers.

The Man Who Saved the Skyscraper

Fazlur Khan and the idea that would turn architecture on its head.
by Nick Greene via Mental Floss on July 21, 2024
The White House.

How the Labor of Enslaved Black Men Built the White House

On the construction of America's new capital city.
by Corey Mead via Literary Hub on June 5, 2024
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
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
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Walt Disney Presents Manifest Destiny

On the St. Louis theme park that never made it past the drawing board.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via HNN on April 30, 2024
Mabel E. Macomber

The Neighborhood Nuisance: One Woman’s Crusade to Shape Brooklyn

“It is true that my life has been threatened as the leader of this playground campaign,” wrote Mabel E. Macomber in 1929 from Brooklyn’s Bedford neighborhood.
by Alexandra Miller via The Metropole on September 5, 2023
Photo collage of L.J. Davis, Jervis Anderson, and a street map

The Invention of a Neighborhood

In the early years of Brooklyn’s gentrification, a 1977 New Yorker piece by Jervis Anderson captured the process in a freeze-frame.
by Jonathan Lethem via The New Yorker on August 21, 2023
Block level FHA map of Cincinnati.

Pair HOLC Maps With FHA Maps To Tell A More Complete Story

The Federal Home Loan Bank Board openly admitted to operating as the Johnny Appleseed of redlining, sowing its seeds into the private financial system.
by Lawrence T. Brown via The Metropole on August 16, 2023
Universal HipHop Museum construction site.

On 50th Anniversary, Hip Hop Rises Again in the Bronx

The Universal Hip Hop Museum is poised to bring an economic and cultural infusion to the borough where the genre was born and bred.
by Brentin Mock via CityLab on August 11, 2023
Map Green Lawn Cemetery.

An Indianapolis Archivist’s Curiosity Revives Historical Truths

A Black cemetery by the site of the former Greenlawn Cemetery in Indianapolis is now a point of contention as the city plans to develop the area.
by Mary Lee Pappas via Arts Midwest on June 29, 2023
Exchange Coffee House illustration
partner

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
Collage of famous historical sites around the world.

The Future of Historic Preservation: History Matters … But Which History?

The complicated and visceral issue of how we preserve our history offers an opportunity for meaningful discourse.
by Jennifer Tiedemann via Discourse on February 28, 2023
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