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A Nonfiction Writing Course  ·  Taught in Person

UnderOneRoof

Writing Nonfiction  ·  Essay  ·  Memoir

Every door on every floor opens on a true story.

At 2601 Pennsylvania Avenue  ·  Philadelphia

Notices & Announcements

Posted Saturday, September 26, 2026 Residents who would like to join Under One Roof are invited to email Professor Mulhern at authorjamesmulhern@gmail.com. All sessions are taught in person at 2601. No one is ever asked to share writing they would rather keep private.
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A Reading Companion

The Lives Within the Walls

Reading Buildings, Shaping True Stories

Eight nonfiction books, a short-form companion, and nine adaptable narrative blueprints for writing the life of a building. Use these optional recommendations to study how a room, an address, a question, or a chorus of voices can organize a true story.

Handouts & Worksheets

The Lives Within the Walls The Lives Within the Walls (Word)

Books to Study

  • Ziegelman, Jane. 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement. HarperCollins, 2010. One address, several households, one recurring subject. Read about the book
  • Abramsky, Sasha. The House of Twenty Thousand Books. New York Review Books, 2015. A floor plan becomes a portrait of a mind. Read about the book
  • Broom, Sarah M. The Yellow House. Grove Press, 2019. Family before the narrator; home before and after loss. Read about the book
  • Tippins, Sherill. Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York’s Legendary Chelsea Hotel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. A building’s long life told through intersecting lives. Read about the book
  • Lough, James. This Ain’t No Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel, 1980–1995. Schaffner Press, 2013. An oral-history chorus rather than one governing voice. Read about the book
  • Orlean, Susan. The Library Book. Simon & Schuster, 2018. A central question carries several interwoven stories. Read about the book
  • Austen, Ben. High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. Harper, 2018. Several lives carry a history of housing and power. Read about the book
  • Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Doubleday, 2010. Rooms as doors into a much larger history. Read about the book

What the Handout Contains

Each book receives a structural reading map and an original six-step writing template for a possible 2601 essay. The templates are teaching adaptations, not the books’ exact chapter sequences. The guide distinguishes a single-building history from a family memoir, an institutional history, or a housing-complex narrative.

A short-form companion examines Joseph Mitchell’s “Up in the Old Hotel.” A structure-selection worksheet and a thirty-minute workshop help writers test several ways of shaping the same material without inventing scenes or dialogue.

This is a reading guide, not a reproduction of the books. Chicago-style citations in the handout identify the publisher material, excerpts, interviews, and reviews supporting the structural descriptions. No extra purchase or reading is required for the course.

Best paired with Session 7 and Session 10. These exercises do not create an obligation to produce an anthology.

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