Gabrielle Esperdy's Books

Modernizing Main Street

Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

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Modernizing Main Street

Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

An important part of the New Deal, the Modernization Credit Plan helped transform urban business districts and small-town commercial strips across 1930s America, but it has since been almost completely forgotten. In Modernizing Main Street, Gabrielle Esperdy uncovers the cultural history of the hundreds of thousands of modernized storefronts that resulted from the little-known federal provision that made billions of dollars available to shop owners who wanted to update their facades. 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.

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Page Count

318

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226218023

ISBN 13

9780226218021

American Autopia

An Intellectual History of the American Roadside at Midcentury

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

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American Autopia

An Intellectual History of the American Roadside at Midcentury

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

Early to mid-twentieth-century America was the heyday of a car culture that has been called an "automobile utopia." In American Autopia, Gabrielle Esperdy examines how the automobile influenced architectural and urban discourse in the United States from the earliest days of the auto industry to the aftermath of the 1970s oil crisis. Paying particular attention to developments after World War II, Esperdy creates a narrative that extends from U.S. Routes 1 and 66 to the Las Vegas Strip to California freeways, with stops at gas stations, diners, main drags, shopping centers, and parking lots along the way. While it addresses the development of auto-oriented landscapes and infrastructures, American Autopia is not a conventional history, offering instead an exploration of the wide-ranging evolution of car-centric territories and drive-in typologies, looking at how they were scrutinized by diverse cultural observers in the middle of the twentieth century. Drawing on work published in the popular and professional press, and generously illustrated with evocative images, the book shows how figures as diverse as designer Victor Gruen, geographer Jean Gottmann, theorist Denise Scott Brown, critic J.B. Jackson, and historian Reyner Banham constructed "autopia" as a place and an idea. The result is an intellectual history and interpretive roadmap to the United States of the Automobile.

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Page Count

567

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813943108

ISBN 13

9780813943107

Modernizing Main Street

Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Modernizing Main Street

Architecture and Consumer Culture in the New Deal

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

318

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226218023

ISBN 13

9780226218021

American Autopia

An Intellectual History of the American Roadside at Midcentury

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

American Autopia

An Intellectual History of the American Roadside at Midcentury

By: Gabrielle Esperdy

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

567

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813943108

ISBN 13

9780813943107

Book's by Gabrielle Esperdy

Modernizing Main Street

Modernizing Main Street

American Autopia

American Autopia

Modernizing Main Street

Modernizing Main Street

American Autopia

American Autopia

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