The June 1964 Boston issue of Architectural Forum is more than a magazine—it is a snapshot of a moment when American cities believed they could redesign their own future.

Dedicated almost entirely to Boston and its urban renewal program, this issue captures the peak of postwar optimism in planning, architecture, and engineering. The pages are filled with aerial photographs, physical models, and ambitious renderings of what the city could become: Government Center, the transformation of the old waterfront, and the reorganization of traffic, density, and civic space.

What makes this issue particularly powerful is its tone. Urban renewal is presented not as destruction, but as progress. Aging neighborhoods are framed as problems to be solved through modernist clarity, large-scale intervention, and centralized planning. Concrete, glass, and monumental civic buildings are shown as tools of democracy and efficiency. The city is treated almost like a machine—something that can be optimized if approached scientifically.

The Boston Government Center project, featured prominently, stands as a symbol of this era. It reflects a belief that architecture could express authority, transparency, and renewal all at once. Today, opinions about the project are divided, but in 1964 it represented confidence—confidence in institutions, in planners, and in the future itself.

Seen from today’s perspective, the issue is also a quiet document of what urban renewal cost. Entire districts were erased. Social fabric was disrupted. What the magazine does not show is as revealing as what it celebrates. This makes the issue invaluable: it allows us to understand not only the design language of the time, but the mindset behind it.

For collectors, historians, and anyone interested in American urban history, this Boston issue of Architectural Forum is a primary source. It sits at the intersection of architecture, politics, engineering, and culture—capturing the exact moment when modernism believed it could fix the city.

Adding this issue to a home library is not just about owning a magazine. It is about preserving a chapter of American self-confidence, ambition, and contradiction—printed on paper, photographed from the air, and bound in June 1964.

This house is designed for the medium width lot. Yet in the face of these many problems the plan presented contains large, well ventilated rooms and the planning for modern convenience and recreation. Living room is generous in size with plenty of wall space for interesting furniture grouping. Bedrooms are large with two or more spaces for a bed, and each is equipped with a planned closet with sliding door so arranged to provide a space for shoes, hats and clothing.

The dining space is neither a dining room nor a breakfast room—a part of the kitchen yet separated sufficiently to provide dining space for guests. Everything has been thought of in the planning of the kitchen—space for a recessed refrigerator, range, adequate counter work space, sink either conventional or mechanical—and most important of all to the young housewife is the utility room with space for laundry equipment. This space is light and well ventilated. From the utility room you pass to the breezeway which is screened and provides a porch as well as a covered entrance to the garage—just the place for small children to play while mother is busy in the kitchen and laundry.

A modern bathroom is provided, close to all rooms of the house, and in the hall approaching the bathroom is a storage closet for seasonable clothing and comforts and blankets. There is also an adequate linen closet and a cabinet for coats, vacuum cleaner, etc.

In the garage there is a closet for the children’s toys, a hobby room equipped with a work bench where many happy hours can be spent building for fun. A closet that can be equipped with a locked door is provided for garden tools, lawn mower and hose.

In the hall approaching the bathroom, space is provided for a gas-fired floor furnace, and a grille in the ceiling overhead for the installation of an attic fan for cooling, with a cupola on the roof to take care of the exhaust. Altogether, this house lacks nothing that is usually planned in a house two or three times the size and, in addition to modern planning, the exterior is designed to combine the use of modern materials with good taste. You will be proud of this home.

There are corner windows in the living and bedrooms, and an interesting bay window in the dinette. To emphasize what might otherwise be the conventional front door, ornamental blinds have been...added—these blinds also give an opportunity for color in contrast with a white house.

The ornamental posts designed as supports for the front porch are scroll sawed out of wood, either cypress or oak, and a full-sized design is provided with the working drawings. The diamond shaped panel design garage door is created by the application of screen moulding over an ordinary flush-type overhead door.

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source: The Progressive Farmer – Distinctive Southern Homes | 1950

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 Some legends are born on stage. Others are kept alive on shelves.

With the latest additions to my home library, the Rat Pack is finally back together — not under Vegas lights, but in print. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. now stand side by side in book form, their stories aligned the way history remembers them: different voices, shared momentum.

The Rat Pack was never a formal group. It was chemistry. Sinatra brought authority and emotional precision; Dean Martin delivered ease, humor, and an almost effortless cool; Sammy Davis Jr. carried virtuosity, resilience, and brilliance. Together, they created a cultural language that defined postwar American entertainment.

These books reveal something performances alone cannot. That’s Amore shows the domestic, familial side of Dean Martin — a reminder that warmth was not a stage act but a lived reality. Nancy Sinatra’s portrait of her father strips away the mythology just enough to expose discipline, loyalty, and an exacting sense of standards. Sammy Davis Jr.’s Hollywood story adds depth and tension, placing talent against the backdrop of racial barriers that made his success both extraordinary and costly.

There is also Las Vegas — not merely a location, but a symbol. Vegas was where America rehearsed pleasure, confidence, and reinvention. The Rat Pack turned it into a cultural capital, a space where camaraderie became spectacle and style became narrative. Having these books together feels like reconstructing that world in fragments: family photographs, backstage moments, private reflections.

This is not nostalgia for its own sake. It is recognition. The Rat Pack mattered because it showed how friendship could become performance, how loyalty could survive fame, and how American identity was shaped as much by sound and silhouette as by politics.

Now, reunited in my home library, they no longer belong to the noise of applause. They belong to memory, context, and quiet reading — which may be the most respectful stage of all.

Some books do more than fill shelf space. They quietly rearrange a room’s emotional geography.

This week, I added three volumes to my home library that belong together, even if they never planned to meet: That’s Amore, Remembering Jackie, and Grace Kelly: A Life in Pictures. Each one is a window into a different form of American myth — love, dignity, and elegance — seen not from a distance, but from close enough to feel human.

That’s Amore is, at its core, a family story. It is not the loud Dean Martin of the stage lights, but the private man: a father, a husband, a presence felt at the kitchen table as much as on screen. The photographs and memories carry a warmth that feels almost Mediterranean in spirit — a reminder that American popular culture has always been shaped by immigrant emotion, not just ambition. This is a book about affection without irony.

Remembering Jackie shifts the tone. Here, the images are quieter, more contemplative. Jacqueline Kennedy appears not as a monument, but as a woman navigating history with restraint and inner discipline. There is grace here, but it is earned, not decorative. The book captures something essential about 20th-century America: the belief that style can be a form of moral language, and that privacy can coexist with public responsibility.

Then there is Grace Kelly — the screen icon who became a princess without ever abandoning her composure. Grace Kelly: A Life in Pictures reminds us why she remains timeless. Her elegance was never excessive; it was controlled, almost architectural. In an era fascinated with noise and visibility, her image still communicates calm, balance, and self-command.

Together, these three books form a small archive of American sensibility. They speak about family, restraint, femininity, and the emotional codes of a world that believed in manners, presence, and meaning beyond spectacle.

They now sit on my shelf not as collectibles, but as companions — reminders that culture is not only produced by institutions, but preserved in memory, photographs, and the quiet act of reading.

IF YOU are looking for a house plan that has flexibility, convenience, and outstanding modern design, with a touch of Old South charm thrown in for good measure—then this is for you. Still another point in its favor is economy of construction.

The room designated as a den is so situated that it can be used as a den, dining room or third bedroom, according to the size and activities of your family. If it is used as a den or bedroom, the kitchen end of the long living room serves as a dining area.

For a small family this extra room might double as both dining room and study, depending on the choice and arrangement of the furniture used in it.

The garage is close to the house and is reached through a screened breezeway that also serves the purpose of a porch. This feature of the plan is optional and either the breezeway or both breezeway and garage can be omitted or perhaps built later.

The house is entered in the front through a foyer which eliminates unnecessary traffic through the living room. From this foyer any part of the house may be reached with a minimum of effort. There are two closets close at hand for guests' coats, etc., and another closet for family storage.

Each bedroom has a large closet and an arrangement of doors and windows which provides good wall space for furniture.

This plan provides for one full bathroom and a half bath, which is more than is absolutely necessary, but adds greatly to the convenience of the house.

The kitchen is large and has a lot of cabinet space. There is also room enough for a table for family meals.

The exterior design is most attractive and illustrates the present-day trend in good residential design. The windows are placed in such a way as to add interest. The graceful wrought iron work around the entrance shows the influence of the fine old houses of the Deep South, yet is simple enough in design to be in perfect keeping with this modern home.

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source: The Progressive Farmer – Distinctive Southern Homes | 1950

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HERE is a house that literally rambles all over the lot—the better to catch the sun and breeze, and to delight the heart of the person who loves the low, spreading type of architecture. It is at home on either a large city lot, a small town or a country estate.

The bedrooms are located so that they have an exposure on three sides, and as much as possible of their outside walls are devoted to windows. 

In most plans the halls are used only as a means for getting from one part of the house to the other. In this plan the hall next to the bedrooms serves a more useful purpose. The small bay makes an ideal sewing or reading nook. The bath is just off this hall.

One of the most attractive features of this plan is the sun room, which can be used as an extra bedroom, den, sitting room or play room. On both ends of this room are storage closets—one a pantry and the other a general storage space.

The living room has been carefully designed with regard for comfort. The furniture is sketched in a typical arrangement but it could be placed in various other ways to suit the taste of the individual. The small alcove off the living room makes an excellent spot for a piano, desk, or game table.

The dining room is average in size and has good light and circulation of air.

The kitchen, with its small dining area at one end, is conveniently and attractively arranged. In the hall next to the kitchen is a closet containing a small water heater. It should be noted that this is one of two heaters in the house. The other is in the closet next to the bathroom.

The garage is connected to the house by a screened breezeway which has a built-in oven or barbecue pit.

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source: The Progressive Farmer – Distinctive Southern Homes | 1950

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