What lies beneath the glitter of the Gilded Age? Rainey Tisdale and I worked with the talented team at the Frick Pittsburgh to reimagine Henry Clay Frick’s “starter mansion,” Clayton. We peeled back the gilding to reveal connections between the home and the world of steel and domestic labor that supported the rise of American industrial capitalism, using unique interventions, dialogue, and interactive strategies to invite guests to consider the legacies of the Gilded Age that remain with us today.

The Bayshore Center at Bivalve is one of New Jersey’s gems. Located along the quiet Delaware Bayshore, it preserves the shipping sheds and waterfront of the region’s massive oyster industry of the 19th and early 20th century. With a newly restored boat (NJ’s official tall ship, the AJ Meerwald) and the resumption of programming, the Bayshore Center hired Saltworks to help create a cohesive program for K-12 students that combined adventures under sail with close-up, hands-on learning about the oyster industry and the bay’s ecology. Here, Donald “Biggie” Crislow shows some oyster opening techniques he practiced as a young man in the last days of the industry.

This question lies at the heart of Unvarnished, a landmark IMLS-funded digital history project led by the Naperville (IL) Historical Society. Six communities across the American North and West surfaced their own histories of residential racial discrimination and the fight for fair housing. Saltworks served as a project editor and devised educator and classroom curriculum materials based on four essential questions about why we live where we live.