About Mark

Mark Houser is an author, professional speaker, and award-winning journalist who shares surprising and inspirational stories about the men and women behind America's landmark skyscrapers.

A native of Pittsburgh, Mark has long been fascinated by the city’s proud industrial heritage and legendary tycoons such as Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. His monthly Pittsburgh Magazine column about the historic downtown highrises built for these business titans led Mark to seek out similar stories in other American cities for his first book, MultiStories.

Mark’s latest book, Highrises Art Deco, is a collaboration with Chris Hytha, a digital artist and architecture school graduate from Philadelphia. The two have traveled across the country to photograph, research, and document 100 of America’s most spectacular skyscrapers from the Roaring ‘20s to the Great Depression. Their online Highrises Collection gallery features Chris’s stunning drone scan compositions of nearly 200 landmark tall buildings from coast to coast, each accompanied with Mark’s original writing.

More than 1,500 people have gone on Mark’s guided skyscraper rooftop tours. An award-winning freelance journalist and former reporter and editor at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Mark is also a veteran public relations professional and has spoken to audiences from New York to California to Germany. He has appeared on CNN, FOX, NPR, and in the New Yorker, where he shared his true story of watching helplessly at a local bar as his guest, the future president of France, scorched his mouth on habanero salsa.