Astronomy on the Flats: How the Moons of Mars and the Death of a President Altered the Late Nineteenth-Century Washington, DC, Landscape

March 8, 2023.Reading time 40 minutes.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our theme for March 2023, Science City, an exploration of the ways cities and science have interacted over time and around the world. By Vincent Femia Simon Newcomb often arose from his bed in the middle of the night to walk two miles to the Naval Observatory grounds. […]

Living in White Spaces: Suburbia’s Hidden Histories

October 10, 2022.Reading time 30 minutes.

By David S. Rotenstein In 2009 I learned about one African American woman who briefly lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, a Washington, DC, suburb. She worked for a white physician’s family. Lucille Walker’s story as a Black domestic worker survives in bits and pieces in the memory of the physician’s daughter, Ann Scandiffio. In 1939 […]

Shifting a Timeline—A Review of “The Misunderstood History of Gentrification”

March 7, 2022.Reading time 7 minutes.

Gale, Dennis. The Misunderstood History of Gentrification: People, Planning, Preservation, Urban Renewal, 1915-2020. Temple University Press, 2021. Reviewed by David J. Goodwin Gentrification entered the scholarly discourse on cities in 1964 with London: Aspects of Change, Ruth Glass’s study regarding the influx of middle-income residents moving into historically working-class London neighborhoods and the gradual transformation […]

Black Broadway in Washington, D.C.

December 21, 2021.Reading time 8 minutes.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. By Briana A. Thomas Writing my debut history book, Black Broadway in Washington, D.C., felt like traveling through time. Navigating through the past three centuries of rich, vibrant, […]

African Americans at St. Elizabeth’s — A Review of Madness in the City of Magnificent Expectations

February 2, 2021.Reading time 10 minutes.

Summers, Martin. Madness in the City of Magnificent Expectations: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation’s Capital. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Reviewed by Debra Kram-Fernandez Madness in The City of Magnificent Expectations is concerned with the history of psychiatric care for Black, Brown, and White Americans suffering from serious and/or chronic […]

The Metropole Bookshelf: Boston University’s Paula Austin Discusses How African American Washingtonians Navigated the City in Her New Book, Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC

February 4, 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

The Metropole Bookshelf is an opportunity for authors of forthcoming or recently published books to let the UHA community know about their new work in the field. Austin, Paula. Coming of Age in Jim Crow D.C. Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life. New York: New York University Press, 2019. By Paula Austin Coming of Age […]

CFP: Urban Affairs Association 2020 to be held in Washington D.C.

August 12, 2019.Reading time 10 minutes.

The Urban History Association would like to draw your attention to the Call for Papers from the Urban Affairs Association for its 2020 conference: Shaping the Future of Urban Research. You can go to their CFP directly, however the call is also provided below. April 2-4, 2020 | Washington, DC USA | Renaissance Hotel Shaping the Future of Urban Research […]

CFP: 2020 Latrobe Chapter Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians

June 6, 2019.Reading time 5 minutes.

Call for Papers: 2020 Latrobe Chapter Symposium Race, Ethnicity, and Architecture in the Nation’s Capital In 2019, the Washington Post reported that the nation’s capital had the highest intensity of gentrification of any American city, with more than 20,000 African Americans displaced from low-income neighborhoods from 2000 to 2013. For architectural and urban historians, the […]

Mid-Century Modernism on the Fringes of D.C.: Charles Goodman and NOVA’s Hollin Hills

September 20, 2018.Reading time 18 minutes.

When one thinks of Northern Virginia, Old Town Alexandria might be the first place that comes to mind. Historic, compact, and on the water, Old Town remains a popular brunch and tourist destination and a way station for intrepid souls proceeding on to nearby Mount Vernon. Yet, since the 1960s, Alexandria’s industrial areas such as […]

Member of the Week: Vyta Baselice

September 4, 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

Vyta Baselice PhD Student in American Studies George Washington University Describe your current research. What about it drew your interest? My dissertation explores the cultural history of concrete. I examine why concrete became the second most consumed material on the planet and how it came to define architectural and social modernity in the United States. […]