The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
This is the third entry in our May series, Cities at Play. By Dr. Ellery Weil In 2005, the London skyline faced a threat to one of its iconic features, in the form of an eviction notice. The target? The London Eye. The Ferris wheel, which had been constructed in honor of the new millennium, […]
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This is the second post in our May theme month, Cities at Play. By Maggie McNulty On November 30, 2022 at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Interstate 70 (I-70) Cover Park in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, Governor Jared Polis stated, “This is really a model of innovative solutions, green infrastructure, state of the art technology […]
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This post is the first entry in our May theme month, Cities at Play. By Alexandra Miller The bullet ripped through Max Kaufman. It was a Thursday morning in August 1919, and the twelve-year-old boy was playing in front of his Brooklyn home in the rapidly developing stretch of Snediker Avenue between Dumont and Livonia […]
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By Grace Gillies In the early second century BC, Rome was rocked by a scandal so intense that the consuls decided to pursue investigations instead of leading their foreign campaigns. These investigations led to severe restrictions to the worship of Bacchus (Greek Dionysos) and even the execution of Roman citizens. The Bacchanalian conspiracy has been […]
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This article includes excerpts from A Slumless America: Mary K. Simkhovitch andthe Dream of Affordable Housing by Betty Boyd Caroli and published by OxfordUniversity Press in the US © Caroli 2/2/26. Used by permission. All rightsreserved. Footnotes have been removed to ease reading. Lectures formed the centerpiece of Mary’s days, and she planned carefully to take […]
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By Dan Holland Pittsburgh’s mid-twentieth century renaissance is often hailed as a transformational makeover for a city desperately trying to escape its smoky past. Male leaders such as Pittsburgh Mayor David Lawrence (1889-1966), who would become Pennsylvania’s 37th governor, Richard King Mellon (1899-1970), the Mellon Bank financier, and Edgar Kaufmann (1885-1955), who directed Kaufmann’s Department […]
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We at The Metropole are excited to issue a call for our next theme month: Cities at Play We welcome submissions about any aspect of play, recreation, or leisure in the urban environment. How have cities uniquely shaped the way their inhabitants play, and how has play in turn shaped the built environment, the social […]
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By Marc Stein The following text is reprinted with permission from Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s by Marc Stein, published by The University of Chicago Press. © 2026 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. When the PBC [Philadelphia 1976 Bicentennial Corporation] board met on October 23 [1970] at the Penn Mutual […]
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By Dan Holland The passage of Pittsburgh’s first fair housing law in 1958, the second in the nation, and Pennsylvania’s in 1961 (also among the first statewide fair housing laws in the nation), were rare civil rights victories at a time when record numbers of African Americans were being relocated under the federal urban renewal program. The […]
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This is the seventh post in Urban and Environmental Dialogues, our January collaboration with the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). For other entries in the series, see here. By Sara B. Pritchard Ryan Reft’s recent photograph, “Sorrento Italy at night” (Figure 1), opened the Network in Canadian History and Environment and Urban History Association Call for Papers […]
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