Category Archives: Cities

Historian’s Road Trip

Posted on October 23, 2012 by LaDale Winling

This summer my family took a road trip out to the western Chicago suburbs to support some research I have been doing on the creation of Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne was located near Lemont along the Illinois and Michigan Canal … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Chicago, Cities, Higher Education, History, Research | Leave a comment

HOLC Maps

Posted on July 29, 2012 by LaDale Winling

At least since Ken Jackson’s 1980 article in the Journal of Urban History, historians have been fascinated by the security maps created by the security maps created by the Home Ownership Loan Corporation and the process of state-sponsored segregation in … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, History, Housing, Maps | Leave a comment

Historic Aerial Photography – Soil Conservation Service

Posted on June 16, 2012 by LaDale Winling

Next up in blogging the book project is a return to aerial photography. Background: during the New Deal, agriculture was a key priority, and soil a specific component of that — see, for example, Don Worster’s The Dust Bowl. So … Continue reading →

Posted in Chicago, Cities, Digital History, History, New Deal, Photography, Research, University of Chicago | Leave a comment

Historic Photography

Posted on January 18, 2012 by LaDale Winling

A photo project I’ve recently seen passed around Facebook is the Detroit re-photography project by David Jordano. A Chicago-based photographer, in 1973 Jordano was a Detroiter and conducted a photo survey of his city. He recently revisited those sites and … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Cities, Film, History, Photography | Leave a comment

The Philadelphia Story

Posted on July 8, 2011 by LaDale Winling

One of my friends and colleagues, Andrew Highsmith, has a review essay out in the newest issue of the Journal of Urban History. In it, he takes up several recent works on postwar American cities including Tombstone and Jerome, AZ; … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, History, Philadelphia, Politics | Leave a comment

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Posted on March 21, 2011 by LaDale Winling

Another great feature from the Lens blog at the New York Times — newspaper front pages showing the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911. The factory occupied the top three floors of the building and dozens of women jumped to their … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, Higher Education, History | Leave a comment

Creative Destruction

Posted on January 31, 2011 by LaDale Winling

One thing about the federal government: they’re thorough. Doing some archival research on Independence Hall I came across a set of appraisals for all of the land the National Park Service acquired to create the national park. Part of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Cities, History, Research | Leave a comment

Can’t Let That Go By

Posted on December 31, 2010 by LaDale Winling

An interesting error from Ezra Klein: An interesting thesis from Ed Glaeser: Ford, Durant, David Dunbar Buick, the Dodge Brothers, the Fisher Brothers, Henry Leland – it seems as if Detroit once had an automotive genius on every street corner. … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogosphere, Cities, Economics, History | Leave a comment

Blogging Education

Posted on May 9, 2009 by LaDale Winling

The New York Times runs something of an odd story knocking Harvard under the guise of a story on national trends, Slump Revives Town-Gown Divide Across U.S The rats are out in spades this spring in North Allston, a gritty … Continue reading →

Posted in Cities, Higher Education | Leave a comment

Research Note

Posted on March 29, 2009 by LaDale Winling

In the course of some dissertation research I realized that Muncie, Indiana, was a higher-paid but less-educated city than Austin, Texas in 1970. This seems to be largely because of the robust manufacturing sector in Muncie and the midwest and … Continue reading →

Posted in Austin, Cities, Economics, Higher Education, History, Muncie, University of Texas | Leave a comment