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 5
The Interlinked Land: Trains and Transit

Sat., November 14, 2026, at 1:00 P.M. EST

Burgeoning transit networks at the turn of the century were essential to the Craftsman enterprise. It is for this reason that Stickley positioned his Eastwood factory on a train spur with immediate access to the West Shore Railroad, a line that traced a slow arc throughout Western and Upstate New York, down through the Hudson Valley, over to North Jersey, and terminating in New York City. Trains carried raw materials such as lumber to the factory near Syracuse; finished furniture then traveled to the Manhattan showroom, and from there wares and publications reached consumers and sellers throughout the country. How did Stickley factor infrastructure into shaping his business and its national ambitions? What do business records reveal about his suppliers, his production lead times, and the scope of his influence? These questions are not merely descriptive but instead cut to the core of a central contradiction in the Arts & Crafts movement, which prized the local and the vernacular even as it reconciled that ideology with a globalizing world. This lecture zooms out to analyze United Crafts as a profoundly networked and mobile venture, one that reflected the growing complexity of supply chains and an increasingly borderless national ecosystem of consumption.

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.