Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture

by Paula Lupkin

Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, the Young Men's Christian Association built more than a thousand community centers across the United States and in major cities around the world. Dubbed "manhood factories" by Teddy Roosevelt, these iconic buildings served as athletic centers and residential facilities for a rapidly growing urban male population. In Manhood Factories , Paula Lupkin goes behind the reserved Beaux-Arts facades of typical YMCA buildings constructed in this period to understand the urban anxieties, moral agendas, and conceptions of masculinity that guided their design, construction, and use. She shows that YMCA patrons like J. P. Morgan, Cyrus McCormick Jr., and John Wanamaker hoped to create "Christian clubhouses" that would counteract the corrupting influences of the city. At first designed by leading American architects, including James Renwick Jr. and William Le Baron Jenney, and then standardized by the YMCA's own building bureau, YMCAs combined elements of men's clubs, department stores, hotels, and Sunday schools. Every aspect of the building process was informed by this mission, Lupkin argues, from raising funds, selecting the site and the architect, determining the exterior style, arranging and furnishing interior spaces, and representing the buildings in postcards and other printed materials. Beginning with the early history of the YMCA and the construction of New York City's landmark Twenty-third Street YMCA of 1869, Lupkin follows the efforts of YMCA leaders to shape a modern yet moral public culture and even define class, race, ethnicity, and gender through its buildings. Illustrated with many rarely seen photographs, maps, and drawings, Manhood Factories offers a fascinating new perspective on a venerable institution and its place in America's cultural and architectural history.

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) buildings largely constructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in urban downtowns identified by Paula Lupkin in Manhood Factories, tended to be somewhat minimal brick constructions that were generally uninteresting to (or at least overlooked by) most architectural historians. However, Urban YMCA buildings were intentionally developed in order to reach out to urban people and provide them with a place for spiritual edification: a safe haven of proper morals in a city that lacks them. They contained gymnasiums, kitchens, and other features intended not only to entice the otherwise reluctant urbanite to engage in a religious organization but also to provide a balanced life of wholeness. The YMCA’s fourfold mission to address the social, mental, spiritual, and physical can be read into this important yet overlooked architecture pivotal to understanding the Progressive Era's ideological aims in material realization. Paula Lupkin has done a masterful job of researching and reminding Americans about the importance of these otherwise (strictly aesthetically-speaking) forgettable buildings.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful work complete with floor plans and the cultural detail that explains and gives context.