Knowledge Commons | Christopher Bailey | Activity

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Paul Revere Williams’ Clever Trick, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 13:42:16 -0500

In 1943, the War Department issued this informative poster drawn by cartoonist Charles Alston.

Paul Revere Williams was a very successful architect in California. But he had to overcome race prejudice on his […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Run Over by an Ambulance, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:10:30 -0500

The automobile has caused countless thousands of deaths since it was introduced. But traffic fatalities were actually more common before the age of the automobile. In horse-and-buggy days, traffic was chaotic and […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Talking Pictures Are a Flop, but Color Will Change Everything, on the site Historical Miscellany

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 02:50:19 -0400

“Film Plays in Colors Coming, Says Frederick James Smith,” Screenland, April, 1924, p. 16. According to Smith, the experts had anticipated that talking pictures would be the wave of the future, but the first att […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Why Upton Sinclair Supported the Great War, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 17:01:45 -0400

Upton Sinclair, in a 1900 photograph published by Bain News Service.

Upton Sinclair was a dedicated socialist, but he broke with the Socialist Party when it condemned the First World War as “the most u […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, New Yorkers Who Thought They Knew the Southwest, on the site Historical Miscellany

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 14:24:04 -0500

From “The Weekly Washington Merry-Go-Round” by Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen, January 19, 1936, comes an item about New York architects who thought they understood the climate of the Southwest and the nee […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Underground Wiring That Never Happened, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 17:25:13 -0500

Early in the history of telephones, the state of New York very nearly required all telephone and telegraph wiring to be underground. If the rest of the nation had followed, we might have had a much more […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Frederick Bigger on Housing and City Planning, 1938, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 03:08:15 -0500

These are the ideas that drove planning in our cities through the middle of the twentieth century. Experience would seem to show that they were exactly backwards, but the arguments presented here will help us […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Building Wilmerding, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 04:50:16 -0500

The town of Wilmerding in the Turtle Creek valley outside Pittsburgh was designed as an ideal industrial town for the employees of Westinghouse. Here is a note on its progress from the Philadelphia Real Estate […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Thoughts on African Colonization by the Colored Citizens of Pittsburgh, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 16:19:39 -0500

Pittsburgh, (Pa.,) Sept. 1, 1831.

At a large and respectable meeting of the colored citizens of Pittsburgh, convened at the African Methodist Episcopal church, for the purpose of expressing their views in […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Rise and Fall of A. P. Shumaker, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:55:45 -0500

In the early 1900s, the automobile suddenly leapt from rare rich man’s toy to ubiquitous rich man’s accessory. It had not yet reached the masses in 1905, but the automobile business was already making for […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Heights of Buildings in 1914, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 14:54:54 -0400

From a Pittsburgh trade magazine called the Construction Record for April 4, 1914, we take this article about the implications of American skyscrapers. Already they had reached heights unimaginable in Europe, and […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Advantages of Wood-Block Paving, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 08 Oct 2023 18:34:33 -0400

There was a relatively brief fad for paving with wood blocks in North America; perhaps if it had not coincided with the end of the reign of the horse in transportation, the fad might have lasted longer. Today, as […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Two Anecdotes of Helen Jewett, a Girl of the Town, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 22:05:09 -0400

Helen Jewett was a girl of the town (which is to say a prostitute) who was murdered with a hatchet in New York in 1836. The case made a sensation in the newspapers of the time, and a nameless printer (nameless to […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Body-Image Problems in 1915, on the site Historical Miscellany

Tue, 08 Aug 2023 14:47:45 -0400

An advertisement in the Popular Magazine, July 7, 1915. A decade later, magazines were warning readers about the sometimes-deadly effects of “reduce-o-mania.” The fashion in beach bodies changes, but the adv […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Edison’s Phonograph, on the site Historical Miscellany

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 12:27:41 -0400

Edison Home Phonograph from a 1901 catalogue.

From the Musical World for January, 1890, an article on what people might use the phonograph for when it is perfected. The article reveals much about the […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Obituary for E. M. Butz, Architect, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 16:12:14 -0400

The Western Penitentiary, Butz’s most prominent work.

Edward M. Butz was an architect from Allegheny, later the North Side of Pittsburgh, most famous for the sprawling Romanesque Western Penitentiary. This o […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, H. L. Mencken Testifies on Lynching, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 01:34:32 -0400

In 1935, the Sage of Baltimore, H. L. Mencken, was asked to testify before a Senate subcommittee considering a bill to discourage, prevent, and punish the crime of lynching. Here is what he had to […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Chronology of the Life of Athanasius, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 17:34:49 -0500

This extensive chronology was prefixed to Saint Athanase by the well-known patrologist Ferdinand Cavallera (Paris: Bloud, 1908). Since it seems more comprehensive than anything else I could easily find, I […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Leunclavius Defends Zosimus, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 16:53:03 -0400

The German historian, classicist, and orientalist Johannes Leunclavius published a translation of Zosimus, and he felt obliged to defend the pagan Zosimus (the last important pagan historian of Rome) from his […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, A New York Tenement House, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 20:28:02 -0400

A 1905 architectural dictionary gives us a description of the usual New York tenement house, which historical novelists and students of working-class conditions at the turn of the twentieth century will find […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, A World Powered by Compressed Air, on the site Historical Miscellany

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 14:30:26 -0400

A French magazine from 1847 describes the enthusiasm of M. Antoine Andraud for compressed air. M. Andraud actually made some experiments with compressed-air vehicles in the 1840s, but he dreamed of much more. […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Idea of a Hospital a Century Ago, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 15:01:52 -0400

The building on Fifth Avenue still stands today, though no longer in use as a hospital.

How the idea of a hospital has changed is made strikingly clear by this description of the Eye and Ear Hospital from a […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Most Famous Playwright You’ve Never Heard Of, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 12:18:00 -0400

This article originally appeared in Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

In Victorian times, stage plays were straightforward affairs. You had a virtuous maiden and a sneering villain, and the plot was some c […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Cuba-You-Quit Way in Pittsburgh, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 12:11:28 -0400

This article appeared originally in Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

The earliest appearance of Cuba-You-Quit Alley on a map, in 1882.

On the subject of Cuba You Quit Way, von Hindenberg asks, “ […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Sound Effects for the Pictures in 1911, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 14:07:23 -0400

In larger theaters that could afford more than a piano player to accompany the pictures, the drummer would supply sound effects; or, in large metropolitan houses, there might be a separate effects man. Here Clyde […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Music for the Pictures in 1911, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 19 Mar 2022 16:56:00 -0400

A professional movie pianist shares his experience playing for the pictures in the South and in the North.

A communication signed “Virginian” says: “Chicago’s letter in the Moving Picture World of July 1s […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Vernacular of Youth in 1905, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 27 Feb 2022 16:34:26 -0500

Originally from the Chicago Tribune, here is a conversation between two young women on the streetcar, written not according to the rules of English spelling but according to how the voices actually sounded. The […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Trade in Indentured Servants, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 18:12:49 -0500

In the early years of the United States there was a brisk trade in European indentured servants, except in New England, where the trade was outlawed. These servants were slaves for a term: they could be bought […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Greek Ligatures and Abbreviations, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 19:31:05 -0500

Greek texts today are simply printed with the letters of the Greek alphabet, of which the most arcane difficulty is the two forms of the lower-case sigma. But Greek texts from the Renaissance into the early […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Van Wert Prepares to Face the Huns, on the site Historical Miscellany

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 18:29:07 -0500

History may be lurking in a desk drawer in your own house. An old family photo album, unopened for decades, turned out to be full of pictures of Van Wert, Ohio, as the United States entered the First World […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Useful Rather than Ornamental Knowledge, on the site Historical Miscellany

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 14:05:30 -0500

In the introduction to a book of domestic economy printed in 1816, Elizabeth Hammond argues that “domestic knowledge in a female is certainly of more real importance than vain acquirements.” Nor does she lim […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Commercial State of Pittsburgh in 1815, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 14:52:05 -0500

William Cobbett, in his Weekly Political Register for August 26, 1815, points to Pittsburgh as an example of the growing prosperity of the United States, which he regards as the land of liberty. The War of 1812 […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, How to Write to Anybody Who Matters, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 03:00:00 -0500

From a book of useful knowledge for young ladies printed in 1815, here is a list of proper forms of address for any important person you might wish to write to, all the way down to the ones who are only […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Not Much Fun Watching the Olympics, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 18:57:50 -0500

A story told by Aelian gives us a lively picture of the conditions for the audience at the Olympic Games.

Chap. XVIII. How one that was angry threatned to punish his Servant.

A Chian being angry with his […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Zeuxis Charges Admission, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 22:52:07 -0500

One of the most esteemed painters of ancient Greece caused much shaking of heads by charging admission to see one of his paintings. He would hardly recognize the art world today.

Chap. XII. Of the Picture of […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Infanticide Is Illegal in Thebes, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 00:06:55 -0500

From Book II of Aelian’s Varia Historia, a remarkable and unusual custom of the Thebans:

CHAP. VII. That the Thebans expose not Children.

This is a Theban Law most just and humane; That no Theban might exp […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, From Pittsburgh to Harmony in the Early 1800s, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 02:48:16 -0500

John Melish, a traveler in the United States, wrote a detailed and enthusiastic description of the Harmonist settlement at Harmony in Pennsylvania. It is certainly worth reading. What interests us here, however, […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The War on Christmas, on the site Historical Miscellany

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 08:08:00 -0500

Every year, Fox News commentators go on the warpath against the War on Christmas, epitomized in those horrible people who say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” and especially the ones who write “ […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Smile for the Camera., on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:13:41 -0500

This article originally appeared in Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

One of Dr. Boli’s frequent complaints about portraits today is that the subjects feel compelled to grin like imbeciles as soon as a came […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, The Craft of Pointing, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 30 Oct 2021 20:53:30 -0400

This article first appeared in Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine, but since it fits well with the miscellaneous mission of this site, it will be indexed and archived here.

The craft of pointing, for those w […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Social Media in 1810, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 02:56:36 -0400

A husband places an advertisement against his absconded wife on the front page of the Kentucky Gazette; his wife responds in the same forum. Their argument is now public knowledge in Lexington and wheresoever […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, In Roman Africa, Even the Lower Classes Spoke Latin, on the site Historical Miscellany

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 16:12:52 -0400

In his book Roman Africa, Gaston Boissier argues that the evidence from inscriptions is clear: people of the lower classes in Roman Africa were Latin-speakers on the same level with Latin-speakers in all the […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Thomas Sims Returned to Slavery, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sun, 12 Sep 2021 14:39:54 -0400

Boston police and night watch conveying the fugitive slave, Sims, to the vessel

Two engravings in Gleason’s Pictorial accompany a short description of the return of the fugitive slave Thomas Sims in 1851. C […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Guyasuta Visits Pittsburgh, 1787, on the site Historical Miscellany

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 14:46:42 -0400

This article appeared in the Maryland Gazette (in Annapolis), February 1, 1787; it seems to have been reprinted from the Gazette in Pittsburgh. The narrative drips with sarcasm: Guyasuta led the Senecas in the […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, First of May in New York, on the site Historical Miscellany

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 15:56:20 -0400

Illustrated magazines are treasuries of forgotten facts of everyday life. From Gleason’s Pictorial in 1851 we learn that May 1 was traditionally moving day in New York City, and it was a day when the most i […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Don’t Forget Your Hat, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 20:28:02 -0400

Hats as an essential item of masculine apparel have disappeared so thoroughly that we have forgotten they used to be essential. For many centuries, a man simply did not appear outdoors without a hat. I was […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, How Will Hays Will Save Motion Pictures, on the site Historical Miscellany

Sat, 28 Aug 2021 13:42:28 -0400

Cartoon by Pittsburgh’s Cy Hungerford, 1922.

In 1922, Will Hays was hired as chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, at a princely salary, with the idea that his political c […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, What Charles Anthon Looked Like to His Students, on the site Historical Miscellany

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 18:45:06 -0400

An earlier version of this article appeared in Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

The great classical scholar Charles Anthon had much to do with the high standards of learning in nineteenth-century American u […]

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Lady Lytton on How English Typesetters Handle French, on the site Historical Miscellany

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 17:51:05 -0400

“English compositors invariably seem to deal with French accents as confectioners do with caraway seeds—put them into a sieve and shake them out promiscuously.”

——Letter to A. E. Chalon, 1855.

Christopher Bailey wrote a new post, Was Lady Lytton Insane?, on the site Historical Miscellany

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 17:01:53 -0400

“In 1827,” says Wikipedia’s article on Rosina Bulwer Lytton, “she married Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a novelist and politician. Their marriage broke up, and he falsely accused her of insanity and had her detaine […]