Upcoming Programs

In Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago, Will Quam, Chicago’s foremost brick aficionado, chronicles the construction and transformations of the Windy City’s neighborhoods and skyline. In the first book of its kind, Quam traces origins of the local industry from the earliest manufacture of common bricks through the peak of production in the late 1920s, when Chicago produced over a billion local bricks a year and imported nearly another billion face bricks for fancy facades. His talk will also feature the role of brick and terra cotta ornament embraced by Chicago architects and builders from the 1890s through Art Deco skyscrapers and beyond, in postwar towers.

Henry C. Millman, author of the new book Ornamental Cornices: Manhattan’s Sheet-Metal Masterpieces, continues the Museum’s fall focus on brilliant uses of building materials in the urban environment. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the facades of many residential and commercial buildings in America’s cities were crowned with sheet-metal cornices that blossomed into elaborate and impressive expressions of architectural eclecticism. Of all the cities where these cornices were installed, New York holds the greatest number and variety–particularly in such Manhattan neighborhoods as Chinatown, the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Harlem.

In his online talk, “The Origin of High-Rise Construction and Why You’ve Never Heard About It,” historian Gregory Dreicer will explore how nineteenth-century builders industrialized the building process. Although this transformation included the development of the long-span beam, truss structures, and high-rise construction, historians have not told us about it. Dreicer explains why, by asking simple questions—“What is a wooden bridge?”—he challenges the narratives that shape the past and future of our designed environments.

On September 27, 1926, the University of Pittsburgh broke ground on the “Cathedral of Learning,” a signature skyscraper that was to be the tallest in the world outside Manhattan. Marking the upcoming centennial of the remarkable academic building, architectural historian and University of Pittsburgh professor Drew Armstrong will present research from his book-in-progress on the planning, design, and realization of this Neo-Gothic skyscraper.