The Richard H. Driehaus Museum is a mansion in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, which is a wonderful example of the decorative style of the "Gilded Age". It is all the more amazing, because it is the oldest building with its original interior in Chicago. The "About" link provides visitors with a biography of Richard Driehaus, the Chicago entrepreneur who founded the museum. Access to his...

Like many of his peers who were "to the manor born", Sir Henry Dryden was a 19th century Brit who was fascinated with archaeology and the world of antiquity. Before his death in 1899, he produced thousands of architectural and archaeological drawings based on the things he saw and studied during his travels around Britain and Europe. Recently, a consortium of institutions including the University...

Some regular Scout Report readers may be asking the question: "How do you fit an entire skyscraper online?" Well, the people at the Skyscraper Museum in Battery Park have done just that, and have even found room for a few virtual exhibits and some great material on the World Trade Center Memorial project. The museum itself was founded in 1996 and is an "educational corporation devoted to the study...

As a way to cope during the difficult period after the attacks on the Word Trade Center on September 11, 2001, many people began to revisit their memories of the buildings themselves. With a keen eye towards preserving some of these materials, National Public Radio brought together artists, historians, and other interested parties in order to collect and preserve various audio traces of these...

Antonio Lafreri was a master printmaker and publisher in sixteenth century Italy, and his Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae offers a number of engravings of Rome and Roman antiquities. The University of Chicago Library happens to have a copy of this work which they have recently digitized and placed online here for the general public. It's a remarkable collection, and all told visitors can look...

Steven Enich was a Serbian-American lawyer who practiced primarily in Wisconsin for many decades. He was also quite the photographer, specializing in photographs of buildings with great significance to the Serbian Orthodox community. He made a number of visits to the former Yugoslavia to do just that and he amassed over 5,000 slides. After he passed in 2004, his widow donated much of his work to...

The pandemic inspired architect Valentino Gareri to design a school building with integrated indoor and outdoor spaces that could keep people safe from the coronavirus while connecting with nature. According to Gareri, "the schools of the future will have to be designed under a new point of view: rather then [sic] just considering criteria of sustain-ability, they will have to embrace the...

Twenty-five years strong, and with an interest in lighthouses throughout the world, the United States Lighthouse Society (USLHS) has a website that informs the public about restoration projects, tours of lighthouses, and the complete subject index to the Society's magazine, the Keeper's Log. The USHLS is a "non-profit historical and educational organization incorporated to educate, inform, and...

Thomas MacLaren wandered around England, Italy, Scotland, Switzerland, and other far-flung provinces between 1880 and 1891. MacLaren received his formal education at the Royal Academy of London and then moved to Colorado, where he designed dozens of recognizable buildings. After he passed away in 1928, he left his estate to the University of Colorado in the hope that it would lead to the...

Building "green" buildings is more than just a guideline for the U.S. Green Buildings Council; it's their primary goal and passion. With over 7500 member organizations, their number includes representatives from all sectors of the building industry who are dedicated to promoting buildings that are "environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work." While some of their...