Historian Charles Bahne covers the history of Cambridge's Brattle Street, an elegant Massachusetts residential thoroughfare and historic district. He treats the topic chronologically and looks at the buildings and residents that have occupied the street.

New England Victorian Society president Ed Gordon explores the history of Charlestown in the Victorian era, looking at the many Victorian structures that remain today. The presentation includes slides.

The lecture audio can be downloaded separately.

Jan Turnquist, executive director of Orchard House, looks at the history of the Orchard House, childhood home of novelist Louisa May Alcott and her family. Turnquist describes the lives of each family member in detail. The presentation includes slides.

Audio and video options are available.

According to the WGBH website:

"Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. (1874-1954) was a Boston writer and bachelor bon vivant, best known for having preserved his family's Beacon Street home as a museum of Victorian style and taste. The Wounded Eros, a short documentary film by Todd Gernes, explores the aesthetic relationship between Gibson's literary production and the material culture contexts of his museum and library, set within the social history of turn-of-the-century gay Boston. Following the film, a dramatic reading, These Four Walls: A History of a Romantic Friendship, directed by Jacqueline Romeo and featuring John Anderson and Aleksander Feliks Wierzbicki, will extend the exploration of Gibson's life by depicting his enduring relationship with the eccentric self-styled "Count" Maurice de Mauny Talvande."

Mount Auburn Cemetery president William Clendaniel reviews the 175-year history of Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery, the nation's first landscaped cemetery and a National Historic Landmark. This lecture includes visual aids.

The lecture's audio may be downloaded as an mp3.

Curator and conservator Grant Romer talks about the formation and work of the Boston photography partners Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes and their studio on Tremont Row. Romer looks at the architecture of Tremont Row and how it impacted the work of the partners. His presentation includes slides.

Audio and video options are available.

Professor Lawrence J. Vale shows provocative images from early advertisements to demonstrate some of society's long-held attitudes toward public housing and those who live in public housing. He analyzes government policies as they evolved to provide housing to 'reward people who are most deserving' of assistance, or to provide housing assistance as a 'coping mechanism.'

A panel of scholars and professionals discusses college and university architecture throughout U.S. history, focusing particularly on the architectural history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Professor and author James Ackerman overviews the general history and development of academic architecture in the U.S.; curator Kimberly Alexander specifically overviews MIT's architectural history; and MIT president Charles Vest describes the process of completing the modern Stata Center.

To view part two of this lecture, scroll down to "Related Videos."

Scholar and author Emily Thompson describes the study of aural history—the study of not just music, but of noise and soundscapes as a whole, what cultures heard and how they heard it—and discusses the aural culture in the U.S. from 1900 to 1933. She looks at how sound at the time was influenced by technology and at the consumption of sound, focusing particularly on architecture's influence on sound.