Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference

Conference Presentation, April 2026

In histories of travel and free time, emphasis is often lavished on wealthy travelers taking leave from their work and their homes to rejuvenate in exotic locales. In parallel, however, labor unions provided access to vacation time to their working-class members throughout the twentieth century. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), for example, operated a retreat known as Unity House in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania for most of the century—a key site for the union’s educational ambitions as well as a restful retreat for workers and their families. A Victorian mansion sat at the center of the complex in the early years, but it burned in 1930 and was replaced by a campus of buildings designed by modernist William Lescaze in the mid-1930s. A recreation center was later added by the lesser-known Pennsylvania firm Rinker and Kiefer. Lescaze’s main building (with its murals by Diego Rivera) burned in 1969 as the ILGWU’s ambitions—and its members’ travel opportunities—had evolved and an administrative building was added to the complex designed by Prentice & Chan, Ohlhausen—a late modern building of geometric form and large expanses of reflective glass. Tracing the evolving spatial needs and organizing priorities of the ILGWU as it grew to one of the largest labor unions in the United States with a membership of nearly half a million around mid-century, with roughly 75% of those members being women. Part of an ongoing research project into architecture and organized labor, this paper drew upon the archives of the ILGWU and its various architects to reveal the imbrication of space and solidarity in buildings by and for labor unions.

Main Building designed by William Lescaze, Unity House, 1930s (Lescaze Collection, Syracuse University)