Modernizing Main Street
Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal
Modernizing Main Street
Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal
Esperdy argues that these updated storefronts served a range of complex purposes, such as stimulating public consumption, extending the New Deal’s influence, reviving a stagnant construction industry, and introducing European modernist design to the everyday landscape. She goes on to show that these diverse roles are inseparable, woven together not only by the crisis of the Depression, but also by the pressures of bourgeoning consumerism. As the decade’s two major cultural forces, Esperdy concludes, consumerism and the Depression transformed the storefront from a seemingly insignificant element of the built environment into a potent site for the physical and rhetorical staging of recovery and progress.
318 pages | 66 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2008
Architecture: American Architecture, History of Architecture
Geography: Urban Geography
History: American History, Urban History
Political Science: Urban Politics
Reviews
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Main Street, U.S.A.
2 The New Deal on Main Street
3 Marketing Modernization
4 The Architecture of Consumption
5 Modernism on Main Street
6 Conclusion: A Main Street Modernized
A Note on Sources
Notes
Index
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