Join us for “Anti-domestic: An Alternative Architectural History of Gustav Stickley,” a six-part online lecture series!

Led by Dr. Willa Granger, our new Curator of Education and Collections, this series will consider the broader architectural history of Gustav Stickley, exploring the diverse spaces and places that facilitated his entrepreneurship. We will examine and hypothesize about how Stickley existed in, reacted to, and shaped buildings ranging from the furniture shop at Auburn State Prison to his factory in Syracuse and his tall building in Manhattan, down to the very infrastructure—train networks, lumberyards, and beyond—that enabled the Craftsman vision. In telling this alternative architectural history, we can better understand the man, positioning him less exclusively as a visionary Arts and Crafts crusader and more as a businessman and property owner navigating the complex and contradictory terrain of Progressive-era America.

Lectures may be purchased individually or as a complete series. Click here for the full course description.

Lecture 3
The Tall Office Building Craftily Considered: Stickley’s Property in Manhattan

Sat., October 24, 2026, at 1:00 P.M. EDT

Although purveyors of the Arts & Crafts movement—including Stickley—relied heavily on pre-industrial images and rhetoric to sell their wares, shrewd furniture manufacturers at the turn of the century nonetheless availed themselves of contemporary marketing strategies to platform and promote their products. In Stickley’s case, this included his strategic, albeit ultimately dubious, use of the tall office building. The tall building, as Louis Sullivan famously explored in his essay “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” was a novel building form born of the conditions of modernity, which posed a new problem for architects: how to design and style something drawn out of thin air? This lecture augments previous studies of Stickley’s 12-story midtown Manhattan showroom by laying emphasis on the tall building itself—which Stickley leased for an exorbitant fee—and how The Craftsman Building, as it is still known, reflected the vagaries of Manhattan real estate and the innovations of structural design during this period. Stickley was but one actor in a wider building culture of speculative commercial real estate development designed expressly to optimize tall buildings for a profit.

A La Carte
Member Price: $30 / session
Non-Member Price: $35 / session

Full Course
Member Price: All 6 sessions for $150 (one session free)
Non-Member Price: All 6 sessions for $210

Registration is required. Once registered and paid, you will receive an email prior to each session with a link to join.

Do you have a scheduling conflict for the live session? You can still enjoy the program. Register and we’ll send you the recording! All paid attendees will be emailed a private link to the session recording when it is available, typically 6-7 days after the live program.

Missed us? You can also register retroactively. If you register for a session that has passed, you’ll receive access to the recording when it is ready.

Haven’t tried a session yet? Each session is planned as a “stand-alone” lecture, so you can take them all or attend the topics that interest you most.