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

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.