Mark Houser
Inspiring teams to adapt to disruption and change to create a unique legacy, like the business leaders who built America's first skyscrapers. Author of MULTISTORIES and HIGHRISES. (HouserTalks.com)
Mark Houser is an author, professional speaker, and award-winning journalist who shares the fascinating and inspirational stories of America's first skyscrapers and the men and women who designed, commissioned, and built them.
A native of Pittsburgh, Houser has long been intrigued by the city's legendary Gilded Age steel barons, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, who commissioned some of the city's first skyscrapers. A monthly Pittsburgh Magazine column about landmark towers erected for less well-known entrepreneurs led Houser in search of similar stories in other U.S. cities for his first book, MultiStories: 55 Antique Skyscrapers and the Business Tycoons Who Built Them.
Houser's second book, Highrises Art Deco: 100 Spectacular Skyscrapers from the Roaring '20s to the Great Depression, is a collaboration with digital artist Chris Hytha and combines the origin stories of great buildings in cities from coast to coast with stunning drone scan compositions. Each of these structures, plus an additional 100 tall buildings dating back to the late 19th century, can be explored at the website HighrisesCollection.com.
In presentations for audiences at the Chicago Architecture Center, New York Landmarks Conservancy, California State University Monterey Bay, Detroit Area Art Deco Society, Philadelphia Design Center, Skyscraper Museum, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, and numerous other professional and private groups, Houser has spoken about the historic skyscrapers that define America's urban skylines. More than 2,000 people have taken his guided antique skyscraper rooftop tours.
A former investigative reporter and editor for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Houser won numerous state, national, and international awards for his reporting. His 2002 series "A jury of peers?" revealed systemic racial bias in criminal jury composition and led to a state law broadening jury pools. He has appeared on CNN, FOX, NPR, in the CuriosityStream documentary "History By the Numbers: Skyscrapers," and in the New Yorker, where he told the true story of watching helplessly at a local bar as his guest, the future president of France, scorched his mouth on habanero salsa.
President-elect of his local chapter of National Speakers Association and city coordinator for European professionals visiting Pittsburgh through the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Houser is is the former director of news and information at Robert Morris University. He earned a master's degree in Russian from Ohio State University and a bachelor's in communications from Xavier University. He and his wife, Diane, are the proud parents of four adult children and enjoy travel and scuba diving.
Mark Houser is an author, professional speaker, and award-winning journalist who shares the fascinating and inspirational stories of America's first skyscrapers and the men and women who designed, commissioned, and built them.
A native of Pittsburgh, Houser has long been intrigued by the city's legendary Gilded Age steel barons, Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, who commissioned some of the city's first skyscrapers. A monthly Pittsburgh Magazine column about landmark towers erected for less well-known entrepreneurs led Houser in search of similar stories in other U.S. cities for his first book, MultiStories: 55 Antique Skyscrapers and the Business Tycoons Who Built Them.
Houser's second book, Highrises Art Deco: 100 Spectacular Skyscrapers from the Roaring '20s to the Great Depression, is a collaboration with digital artist Chris Hytha and combines the origin stories of great buildings in cities from coast to coast with stunning drone scan compositions. Each of these structures, plus an additional 100 tall buildings dating back to the late 19th century, can be explored at the website HighrisesCollection.com.
In presentations for audiences at the Chicago Architecture Center, New York Landmarks Conservancy, California State University Monterey Bay, Detroit Area Art Deco Society, Philadelphia Design Center, Skyscraper Museum, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, and numerous other professional and private groups, Houser has spoken about the historic skyscrapers that define America's urban skylines. More than 2,000 people have taken his guided antique skyscraper rooftop tours.
A former investigative reporter and editor for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Houser won numerous state, national, and international awards for his reporting. His 2002 series "A jury of peers?" revealed systemic racial bias in criminal jury composition and led to a state law broadening jury pools. He has appeared on CNN, FOX, NPR, in the CuriosityStream documentary "History By the Numbers: Skyscrapers," and in the New Yorker, where he told the true story of watching helplessly at a local bar as his guest, the future president of France, scorched his mouth on habanero salsa.
President-elect of his local chapter of National Speakers Association and city coordinator for European professionals visiting Pittsburgh through the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Houser is is the former director of news and information at Robert Morris University. He earned a master's degree in Russian from Ohio State University and a bachelor's in communications from Xavier University. He and his wife, Diane, are the proud parents of four adult children and enjoy travel and scuba diving.
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