Building Brasília
A twentieth-century experiment in urban planning promised progress—but carried immense financial and human costs.
How America’s Industrial Elite Built Their Own Palaces
Historic photographs capture Cleveland’s Millionaires’ Row, where Gilded Age wealth met revival-style splendor.
H. H. Richardson and the Making of an American Romanesque
Historical photographs help trace the emergence of Richardsonian Romanesque and its lasting influence on American architecture.
Greening Philly’s Neglected Lots
Spearheaded by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, an urban beautification program transformed neighborhoods in the city of brotherly love.
The Tamest Grizzly of Yellowstone
Adored by tourists and studied by scientists, a grizzly mother named Sylvia became an emblem of the fragile balance between humans and the wild.
Documenting a Disappearing Architecture
The Heinz Gaube Lebanese Architectural Photographs Collection, supported by an innovative mapping project, details threatened buildings across Lebanon.
Enchanting Imposters
Johns Hopkins University’s Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery shows that humans have been creating fan fiction and fake news for millennia.
Send in the Clowns
Lulu Adams came from a long, illustrious line of circus performers and was credited—even if wrongly—with being the world’s first female clown.
Lonely Diarist of the High Seas
As ship stewardess, Ella Sheldon tended to upper-crust women onboard and battled a range of workplace demons. Her journals tell her story.
First Comes Love
A top divorce lawyer collected strangers’ marriage certificates and other wedding-related ephemera—a testament to her perhaps surprising faith in matrimony.