Dr. Emily Bills presented her paper “Imagining a Telephoned City: Bell Telephone Ads and the Los Angeles House” at the 2016 Society of Architectural Historian meeting in Pasadena, CA. The paper demonstrates how the Bell Company utilized the design of, and ideology surrounding, Southern California residential architecture to promote the telephone’s effectiveness in navigating the city virtually, organizing homes efficiently, and embracing private space as the locus for social interaction—particularly for women. In so doing, Bell marketing material promoted their product as the most efficient means of “traveling” across L.A’s vast terrain, serving as both social-connector and space-binder.
Dr. Bills was also involved in the conference in her capacity as the California Coordinator of the Society of Architectural Historians Archipedia Project, an interactive, media-rich online encyclopedia of American architecture developed by the Society of Architectural Historians in collaboration with the University of Virginia Press.