Photograph of Chinatown YWCA in San Francisco (now used by the Chinese Historical Society). Julia Morgan architect. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chinatown_San_Francisco_%2826720090647%29.jpg

Julia Morgan, American Architect

Morgan, the first licensed woman architect in California, helped bring parity to the built environment, the community, and the profession.
Plague column in Vienna, Austria

How to Memorialize a Plague

Vienna's baroque Plague Column, completed in 1693, gave thanks for the survival of a city.
Barragan house

Casa Luis Barragán, Sacred Space of Mexican Modernism

A tour of the Mexican modernist architect Luis Barragán’s house and studio reveals a surprise with a touch of the divine.
warehouse

The Crucial American Warehouse

In 19th-century America, the changing economy called for warehouses, which in turn created the warehouse districts that defined many cities.
Spring Frances MacDonald

The Scottish Sisters Who Pioneered Art Nouveau

Margaret and Frances Macdonald and their Glasgow School of Art classmates Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Harold MacNair were Art Nouveau's Glasgow Four.
Public Baths

Public Baths Were Meant to Uplift the Poor

In Progressive-Era New York, a now-forgotten trend of public bathhouses was introduced in order to cleanse the unwashed masses.
Closed Sears location

Could Sears Have Avoided Becoming Obsolete?

Amid a broader decline of American retail, Sears is struggling. Did changes in its business model over the course of its history doom it to failure?
Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs and the American City

Jane Jacobs, who would have been 100 today and is the focus of the Google Doodle , was a big part of why cities like New York City and Toronto look and feel
Boston City Hospital operating theater, circa 1890, by A. H. Folsom (d. 1926) of Roxbury

Inside the Operating Theater: Early Surgery as Spectacle

Director Steven Soderbergh’s historical drama series, The Knick, brings viewers inside a New York City hospital’s operating room ...
An older McDonald's sign

How McDonald’s Got Its Golden Arches

How McDonald's Got its iconic Golden Arches.