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Museum II · a publication of the Urbanicity house

The Reference Librarian

The Sources Room of Museum II — files, links, bibliography & metadata gathered for the exhibits, under the direction and control of Dr. Frestes.
answers powered by Claude · GROK

Files & Links

Art Institute: the everyday-America canon (for Museum IV) — FILED TO MUSEUM IV (The City): Hopper Nighthawks (the all-night diner), Grant Wood American Gothic (the farm couple), Caillebotte Paris Street Rainy Day (the modern city street), Seurat La Grande Jatte (the public park) — the canonical images of urban/everyday modern life; all CC0 via the artic API. [AI: harvest candidate]
NYHS: New York, New York (Hirschfeld Collection — the city in art) — FILED TO MUSEUM IV (The City): Sheeler's Chanin Building and the painted skyline canon — the vertical city as Americans imagined it. RIGHTS: NYHS images copyright NYHS (see their Rights & Reproductions); reference/study only. NARA American Story photos mostly PD.
The Skyscraper Museum (New York) — DIRECTLY DR. F'S RESEARCH: the only museum devoted to the high-rise as architecture, engineering, real-estate, and urban form — the vertical push in the CBD, its founding subject. Online exhibits (SUPERTALL!, Ten & Taller, Times Square) + walking-tour data. The scholarly home for the office/residential vertical question. RIGHTS: institution retains copyright — reference/study only.
Chicago Architecture Center — The birthplace-of-the-skyscraper interpreter — the Loop, the steel frame, the river tour; deep material on why height happened in a specific CBD. Model + source for a "how the tall building rose" gallery in Museum IV. RIGHTS: institution retains copyright — reference/study only.
National Building Museum (Washington, DC) — The built environment writ large — construction, design, and the city as a system; the everyday infrastructure behind the skyline. Rounds out M4 beyond the tower itself (streets, services, the CBD as machine). RIGHTS: institution retains copyright — reference/study only.

Bibliography

The shelf is being stocked.

Metadata — gallery dossiers

The City Model 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
The central gallery. The entire city in model - every wing of the museum opens onto it, and it opens onto the estate: 143,971 buildings, 189 cities, the CBD and its vertical push.
I The World Timeline 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Origin story of cities — the chronological spine from first crossroads settlements to the modern metropolis (cities.world_cities, 304 rows).
II American Cities 10/10 built · 0/10 sourced
Case studies in the American urban experiment — form, housing, mobility, economics, crime (cities.* contrast tables).
III The Modern World City 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
A world gallery of contemporary cities and their trajectories.
IV The Classroom 7/7 built · 0/7 sourced
A teaching space devoted to the museum at first; convertible later.
V The Walking City 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-walking-city - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
VI The Port City 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-port-city - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
VII Coal and the Clock 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls coal-and-clock - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
VIII Why Buildings Rise 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls why-buildings-rise - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
IX Going Up 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls going-up - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
X The Tenement and the Terrace 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls tenement-and-terrace - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XI The Company Town 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-company-town - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XII The Machine and the Ward 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-machine-and-the-ward - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XIII The Cooled Room 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-cooled-room - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XIV The Sunbelt Bargain 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-sunbelt-bargain - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XV The Return Downtown 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-return-downtown - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XVI The Tower Again 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-tower-again - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XVII The New Mills 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
Hall twin of site.ssm_halls the-new-mills - the claim on the wall is the hall claim, verbatim.
XVIII The Moving City 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XIX The Precinct and the Patrol 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XX The Ward and the Ambulance 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXI The Schoolhouse 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXII The Commons and the Canopy 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXIII The Crossroads 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXIV The Airfield 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXV The Alley and the Margin 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXVI Rails and the River 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXVII Metropolis and Hinterland 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXVIII The Horse and the Motor 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXIX The Aqueduct and the Larder 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXX The Lights and the Arena 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXXI The Crowded Floor 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXXII The Edge and the Gradient 6/6 built · 0/6 sourced
XXXIII The City Profiles 17/17 built · 0/17 sourced
Seventeen cities read as evidence rather than as places: population, density, housing, mobility, economy. Each profile is a public research page in its own right — the gallery is the shelf they stand on. [THE CITY · public research · 17 profiles]
The City in Focus — The Decade Panels 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
Exhibit-walk points: trending city per decade, Most Important Building, company, job, team, citizens; click-to-reveal lessons and questions. Source bench: /admin/emblematic-films.php Series III (site.tasks #7498).
The Earliest Cities 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955: Mohenjo-Daro, Jericho and the first-cities story.
Ancient Babylon 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955: scale model with the Hanging Gardens.
Damascus, Cut in Half 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955: the time-comparison table — Paul-era Damascus beside the present city.
The Seven Hills of Rome 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955: the hills and the Forum.
Alexandria and the Ports 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955: the ancient seaport compared with LA, New York and Baltimore in dioramas.
The Federal Triangle 3-D 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955: White House to Congress as a 3-D webpage — federal buildings gleaming white, the modern city dull.
Texas in the City 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-I: the Texas cities networked in relief; the rest of the state deliberately blank.
The River Room 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-I: the Mississippi past Vicksburg through New Orleans to the Gulf; derricks and refineries offshore.
Chicagoland 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-II: Chicago-Milwaukee-Northern Illinois as one contiguous system.
The Megalopolis 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-II: the northeast corridor, Boston to Richmond, in one diorama.
The Pacific Northwest 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-II: Seattle, Vancouver and the islands of the Salish Sea.
France, with Large Paris 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-II: the primate city against the country.
Great Britain Map Room 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-II: the industrial cities and London, a giant diorama.
The Asia Gallery 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-III: the sixty-foot map — China, the Koreas, Japan, the South China Sea. The world needs to understand Asia.
The Great Desert 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-IV: Himalaya to Nile — Tibet, the Caspian lands, Iran, Iraq, the cradle, Mecca, Cairo, the Levant.
Africa, and the Projection Room 0/0 built · 0/0 sourced
COMMISSION #7955-IV: the continent marked NEW — biomes, peoples, emerging cities; Peters vs Mercator vs Robinson beside it. Africa is perhaps the greatest.

The Glossary

Reputable references, in fine print, for the terms a visitor meets in any gallery — one canon across all the museums of the house.
📖 Open the Glossary

Help us refine the galleries

Know a source we’re missing? Found an error? Have a link the curators should see? Write it below. Nothing appears publicly — every note goes straight to the curator’s desk of Dr. Frestes, who reads, replies, and may publish the best with credit.
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Research assembled with Claude by ANTHROPIC GROK by xAI Gemini by GOOGLE · marks identify the tools; the judgments are the curator’s