The names on the plaque

Strongest examples

Baltimore City HallThe record says its architect was 22 when he designed it.Palace of WestminsterPugin had to submit designs through, and in the name of, other architects.John C. Cochrane: Illinois State CapitolThe same pair ran two capitols side by side for 15 years.

The evidence

Open questions

• Who were the draughtsmen in these offices, and do their names appear anywhere?
• Where did hundreds of finished competition entries come from in a few months?

Selection bias

Medium: the 'young' and 'repeat' names were partly chosen because they stood out.

The rating counts how much of our gathered material lines up with the pattern. It is not a probability that the hypothesis is true, and every count is limited by which buildings were picked for the app (see 'selectionBias' on each card).

Next hypothesis

Moderate65 entries#8Repopulation after the Mud Flood? Testing the timelineThe idea Chris asked us to test: if something buried or emptied cities, you'd expect the evidence of burial and dig-out to come first, then a rush to fill the buildings and the land with people: orphan trains, new orphanages and asylums, child workers, incubator babies on show at the fairs, and big immigration waves. We lined up every dated item we've gathered, decade by decade (the 'overlay' block in this file). The repopulation signals really do bunch together in 1850–1920, alongside the fires and the fairs. The weak spot is the order: in our data the mud-flood evidence (street raisings) starts in the same decade as the orphan trains, not before them.