Milwaukee’s oldest extant fire station offers a glimpse into the life and work of a nineteenth-century fire crew. Firemen once killed time in cramped quarters on the top floor. Watchmen climbed a seven-story, wood-framed watchtower—its stubby remains are at the building’s southeast corner—to survey the neighborhood for suspicious smoke. If they spotted any, fire bells would clang, the firemen would sprint downstairs since the station originally lacked fire poles, and the horse-drawn fire engine would emerge from the broad, segmental-arched opening on the main facade, which originally had paneled doors. The station...more

Urban renewal created the site for this church. From a parklike setting bounded by Elmwood Cemetery and new public houses rises its strong simple form, the roof and walls one. Their yellow-orange ribbed metal-panel exterior surface responds to the buoyant optimism of the African American Christian congregation. A processional pathway leads up the hill to the entrance and directly into the meeting hall. Inside, the baptismal pool is given focus by its placement against a mirrored wall. more

Nearly a quarter of a century had passed since W.E.B. Du Bois, American sociologist and civil rights activist, first visited the campus of what was called at the time the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1914. The campus was hardly recognizable to Du Bois. “I was astonished,” he proclaimed, following a return visit in 1939. “From a ramshackle agglomeration of few buildings, few teachers, and indifferent students it has today magnificent buildings and a thousand college students….” more

The walls of Acoma Pueblo rise atop the dramatic planes of its isolated sandstone mesa. Inhabited since at least 1200 CE, it is one of the oldest continually occupied towns in the United States. While Acoma has undergone alterations, its present layout and design have mid-seventeenth-century origins. Today, the pueblo is the ceremonial center of the Keres-speaking Acoma people, as well an icon of New Mexico for tourists. more