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  • Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture
  • Jan Baetens
Manhood Factories: YMCA Architecture and the Making of Modern Urban Culture by Paula Lupkin . Minnesota University Press, Minneapolis, 2010, 312 pp., illus. ISBN: 978-0-8166-4834-4; ISBN: 978-0-8166-4835-1.

Architectural history, sociology, gender studies and cultural studies come smoothly together in this very interesting publication by Paula Lupkin (assistant professor of architecture at Washington University Saint-Louis) on the "Y," as the YMCA is often called. The book is an exemplarily inviting and challenging study on something that has been so ubiquitous and so "typically typical" that it had become almost invisible in American history: Indeed, thanks to the success of the organization after the Civil War, when it was rebuilt and reorganized by the new generation of WASP entrepreneurs, and to an ambitious building program in the first decades of the 20th century, when more or less standardized Y centers spread nationwide, the YMCA—both a building and as a center of social life (later often associated with gay culture, hence the still-popular song by the Village People)—has long been one of the major landmarks on America's Main Street urban life. Lupkin's book not only tells the story of the developing culture of the Y's, although this story itself, technically speaking, is a variation on a neoclassical ideal and, institutionally speaking, an example of the shift from philanthropy to business, it is also quite fascinating in itself. What Lupkin is most interested in is the social, political, ethical, ideological and commercial aspects of what the YMCA buildings actually stand for. The answer to this question proves to be very complex, since the meaning of the Y has changed dramatically over time.

Broadly speaking, the main changes were twofold, yet each of them had to do with the necessity of adapting the organization to new forms of urban culture in which the original WASP values were no longer at home. In each case, Lupkin describes very well how a change of function corresponded with a change of meaning (and vice versa).

First, from an ideological point of view, Lupkin analyzes the gradual shift from a half-social, half-religious center to a merely social center in which (more and more) athletics, social activities and (less and less) religion were blended. In the former model the initial customers were invited to train themselves in typically WASP ideals such as honesty, hard work, self-control and paternalistic responsibility—it was still possible to transfer these values in the first decades of the Republic from the sphere of family life to the different world of business and commerce. In the beginning, the Y functioned as a kind of informal school in which unmarried young men learned to behave well so that they might become successful in business as well as in social life and marriage. In the latter model, which did not appear overnight, the sporting and social facilities of the YMCA gradually erased the religious function, although this function had never been the main focus: young men were invited to get themselves exposed to religiously tainted activities, but this invitation was never an obligation. The Y rapidly became a social center representing "honest" activities rather than a place of indoctrination or manipulation. Initially, it was strongly opposed to modern entertainment, at least in comparison with competing entertainment forms such as the saloon and the brothel. Later, the Y had to negotiate its place in the new market of mass culture and commercial entertainment, hence the progressive opening to athletics (the swimming pool and the gymnasium were not present in the first YMCA buildings) and new forms of urban culture (the billiard pool soon replaced the lecture hall, at least in the eyes of the visitors). In a still-later period, the ideological dimension of the Y faded away, as the religious dimension had done, and the organization's function became purely social (in that later period, the YMCA also started to rent rooms, a decision that, of course, had a strong impact on the structure of the buildings).

Second, Lupkin examines the increasing tension between the original...

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