Architecture in Depression and War

Architecture in Depression and War Prof. Andrew M. Shanken AS101, Section 2 [email protected] Spring, 2007: TuTh 12:30-2 (Kroeber 155) GSI: Nari Rhee

Description The Great Depression and World War II are arguably the two most influential events for the development of the built environment in the 20th century. Not only did they alter the socio-economic and political landscape on which architecture and urban planning depend, but they also led to technological innovations and vital debates about the built environment. This course examines the 1930’s and 1940’s topically, studying the work of the New Deal, corporate responses to the Depression and war, the important connections between architecture and advertising, the role of the Museum of Modern Art in the promotion of Modernism, the concept of the ideal house, and key texts, theories, and projects from the period. Students can expect to have rich contact with primary materials from the period, to do original research, and to write several short papers and one longer research paper.

Office Hours: Thursday 2:30-4:30 and by appointment (Wurster 486) 642-1452 (o) and 510/652-9347 (h), [email protected]. *Walk-ins are welcome, but to guarantee a spot please sign up on the sheet on my office door ahead of time.

Sections: GSI: Nari Rhee ([email protected]) Tuesday 5-6 pm, Wednesday 10-11

Note on email: I consider email a distant third to personal contact and the phone as a form of communication. Please be considerate of the sorts of issues you address on email, reserving anything that can wait for class or office hours, or a phone conversation. Blackboard or bSpace: Slide lectures will be posted, as will most handouts. I will announce whether we will be using Blackboard or bSpace during the first week of classes.

Readings available at the Calstore S. Giedion, Space Time and Architecture (1941) James O’Gorman, ABC of Architecture (1998) Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: 1943) Reader The reader is available at Metro Publishing, at 2440 Bancroft Way. I strongly suggest purchasing this reader since a majority of weeks we will be reading pieces from it. It will be available after class on Thursday, January 18.

Sessions J16: Introduction: Architecture in Depression and War: Themes and Issues J18: Looking at Architecture-guided discussion through the reading - Reading: O’Gorman, ABC of Architecture (entire) - No Section ------J23: Architecture Before the Crash: The Roaring ‘20’s-lecture J25: New York 1930 - Reading: 1. “Three Modern Masters, from Stern, New York 1930: 551-586 (reader) 2. Allene Talmey, “Profiles: Man Against the Sky,” New Yorker 7 (April 11, 1931): 24-26 (reader) 3. Optional: Winston R. Weisman, “The First Landscaped Skyscraper,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 18 (May, 1959): 54-59 (reader) 4. Also, begin reading The Fountainhead. This is a long novel and it would be useful to break it down in stages. - Writing: Formal Analysis due in class - Section: Introductions, explanation of class, assignments, grading system, and policies. Discussion of Formal Analysis ------J30: Alphabet Soup Architecture-lecture: PWA, WPA, CCC, TVA- guest lecture by Gray Brechin, Department of Geography - Reading: 1. Phoebe Cutler, “On Recognizing a WPA Rose Garden or a CCC Privy,” Landscape 20 (Winter, 1976) 3-9. 2. Diane Ghirardo, “New Deal, New City,” Modulus 16 (1983): 17-29. F1: Better Living: From the Federal Housing Administration to DuPont-lecture and discussion - Reading: 1. Andrew M. Shanken, “Architectural Competitions and Bureaucracy, 1934- 1945,” Architectural Research Quarterly 3 (1999): 43-56 (reader) 2. Optional Reading: Cynthia Henhorn, From Submarines to Suburbs. 3. Continue reading The Fountainhead - Section: Tour of 1930’s and 1940’s Berkeley downtown  Note: Final Project Assignment will be handed out this week. ------F6: European Migration-lecture - Reading: 1. William Jordy, “The Aftermath of the Bauhaus in America: Gropius, Mies, and Breuer,” in Fleming and Bailyn, eds., 485-543 (reader) F8: Making Taste with Modernism: The Museum of Modern Art - Reading: - 1. Henry Matthews, “The Promotion of Modern Architecture by the Museum of Modern Art in the 1930’s,” Journal of Design History 7, 1 (1994): 43-59 (reader) - Section: How to select a final project topic ------F13: Library Visit (Shanken out of town for conference) F15: TBA: Possible Archives Visit - Reading: You should be finished with half of The Fountainhead - Section: T.B.A. ------F20: Wright Reborn: The Third Career of Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre, Usonian, Johnson Wax, Falling Water, and Guggenheim F22: Image-led discussion on Frank Lloyd Wright - Reading: 1. Frank Lloyd Wright, Excerpt from The Disappearing City (1932), in Pfeiffer, 91-112. 2. Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias of the 20th Century, pp. 122-134+ - Writing: Topic due for final project in class - Section: Tour of the Havens House, Berkeley ------F27: Bay Area Modernism: Wurster et. al. - Reading: 1. Excerpt from Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region (reader) M1: Space Time and Architecture-a discussion - Reading: Giedion, Space Time and Architecture, Part I (entire), VI (430, 434- 436, 496-512), VIII (entire), IX (entire) - Section: Continued discussion of Space, Time and Architecture/How to shape and refine a topic sentence. ------M6: The Rise of Industrial Design-lecture M8: 1939 World’s Fair-lecture - Reading: - 1. Warren Susman, “The People’s Fair: Cultural Contradictions of a Consumer Society” in Culture as History, 211-229 (reader) - 2. Folke T. Kihlstedt, “Utopia Realized: The World’s Fairs of the 1930’s,” in Corn, ed., Imagining Tomorrow: 97-118 (reader) - 3. Optional, Jeffrey L. Miekle, Twentieth Century Limited, a history of industrial design in the U.S. - Writing: Bibliography and working topic sentence for final project due in class. - Section: Writing Workshop ------M13: TBA: 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair-Guest lecture M15: The Fountainhead-discussion - Reading: Finish Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead - Section: Discussion of The Fountainhead ------M20: “The City,” a film by Lewis Mumford shown at the N.Y. World’s Fair M22: The Architecture of 194X - Reading: Andrew Shanken, “Planning Culture” (Blackboard) - Writing: Architectural Rags Paper due in class Thursday - Section: The Berkeley Campus in the 1930’s and 1940’s. ------March 26-30: Spring Break

------A3: Architecture and Advertising during World War II-discussion/lecture A5: Dreamhouse Hoopla-lecture/discussion - Reading: - 1. Timothy Mennel, “’Miracle House Hoop-La’: Corporate Rhetoric and the Construction of the Postwar American House,” JSAH 64, 3 (Sept., 2005): 340- 361 (reader) - Section: TBA: Possible view of rare books in the E.D. Library. ------A10: Scrapbook Planning in 194X-Lecture A12: SAH Conference—Shanken out of town: Nari Rhee will take the class today - Reading: None (so that you can be writing!) - Writing: Rough draft of final paper due - Section: Writing Workshop ------A17: The End of Planning: Anti-Futurism during the War, Planning after the War. - Reading: - 1. Andrew M. Shanken, “The End of Planning” (Blackboard) A19: Levittown - Reading: - 1. Dolores Hayden, selection from Building Suburbia (reader and this is also available online through Melvyl) - Section: Domesticity! ------A24: The Mall - Reading: - 1. Gabrielle Esperdy, “The Odd-Job Alleyway of Building: Modernization, Marketing, and Architectural Practice in the 1930’s,” JAE 58 (May, 2005): 24-40 (blackboard) - 2. Cohen, Lizabeth, "From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America," American Historical Review 101 (October 1996), 1050-1081 (blackboard) A26: Rockefeller Center/The New Scale - Section: TBA ------M1: Memorials at Mid-century M3: Conclusions - Writing: Final Papers Due in class - Section: Final Exam Review ------

Assignments and percentage of grade 1. Formal Analysis (1-2 pp.) January 25 5% 2. Architectural Rags Paper (3-4 pp.) March 22 20% 3. Final Paper: 6-8 pages 40%  Topic: Feb. 15 10% of final paper  Topic Sentence/Biblio.: March 8 10% of final paper  Draft due: April 12 40% of final paper  Final Paper due: May 3 40% of final paper 4. Final Exam (time and format T.B.A.) 20% 5. Participation in section 15%

Pop Quiz Policy: Both Nari and I reserve the right to give pop quizzes based on that day’s readings. These are intended to keep you honest as a reader in the course and to reward students who do a faithful job of reading. They will be short and they will be graded. You may not make up a pop quiz.

Attendance: Class is precious: we meet a mere 30 times. You are expected to come to every meeting of the class and section. If you must miss a class or section, please call or email me or Nari in order to tell us about your situation.

Expectations on written work All written work should be lucid, well organized, thoughtfully researched (when applicable), and should argue a point. All papers should have a seductive title, a topic sentence, and be double-spaced, typed, stapled, and paginated. You will be rewarded for taking chances with ideas. You are expected to know and use proper citations in written work. For all matters of style, grammar and citation, please refer to the Chicago Manual or the MLA. A reference librarian can help you find these. Not fulfilling these expectations are grounds for marking a paper down or for returning it for proper completion.

Plagiarism Your work must be your own. If you pass another person’s work off as your own or aide or abet another in this process, it is not just a breach of university rules, it is a breach of the social contract we have as members of an intellectual community. Ignorance of the policy or of what constitutes plagiarism is no excuse. It is your responsibility to be informed. You are encouraged to consult the following website for more information: http://www.reshall.berkeley.edu/academics/resources/plagiarism/ The university’s policies on plagiarism is as follows: Achievement and proficiency in subject matter include your realization that neither is to be achieved by cheating. An instructor has the right to give you an F on a single assignment produced by cheating without determining whether you have a passing knowledge of the relevant factual material. That is an appropriate academic evaluation for a failure to understand or abide by the basic rules of academic study and inquiry. An instructor has the right to assign a final grade of F for the course if you plagiarized a paper for a portion of the course, even if you have successfully and, presumably, honestly passed the remaining portion of the course. It must be understood that any student who knowingly aids in plagiarism or other cheating, e.g., allowing another student to copy a paper or examination question, is as guilty as the cheating student.

Late paper policy No extensions will be granted except in cases of emergency or hardship. If you have an emergency the proper procedure is to get an official extension. Late papers will be penalized one grade per day. An A will become an A- after one day, a B+ after two days, and so on. Please no fiascos of the uncooperative printer sort.

Bibliography *N.B.: This list includes readings from the syllabus, secondary sources on architecture in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and general sources about the period. See below for a list of key primary sources.

Donald Albrecht, ed. World War II and the American Dream (Washington, D.C.: National Building Museum, 1995). This is a great collection of essays that came out of an exhibition at the National Building Museum.

Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Knopf, 1995).

John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976).

Lizabeth Cohen, "From Town Center to Shopping Center: The Reconfiguration of Community Marketplaces in Postwar America," American Historical Review 101 (October 1996), 1050-1081 (Blackboard)

Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930’s (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2004)

Margaret Crawford, "The World in a Shopping Mall," in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, New York Hill & Wang, 1992, 3-30

Lois Craig, et. al., The Federal Presence: Architecture, Politics, and Symbols in United States Government Building (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978).

Phoebe Cutler, The Public Landscape of the New Deal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Phoebe Cutler, “On Recognizing a WPA Rose Garden or a CCC Privy,” Landscape 20 (Winter, 1976) 3-9.

Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Exhibition, 1949).

Gabrielle Esperdy, “The Odd-Job Alleyway of Building: Modernization, Marketing, and Architectural Practice in the 1930’s,” JAE 58 (May, 2005): 24-40 (reader)

Robert Fishman, Urban Utopias of the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier (New York: Basic Books, 1977).

Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., The Intellectual Migration; Europe and America, 1930-1960 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1968). See the essay by William Jordy.

Diane Ghirardo, “New Deal, New City,” Modulus 16 (1983): 17-29.

Diane Ghirardo, Building New Communities: New Deal America and Fascist Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia (New York: Vintage, 2003).

Cynthia Henhorn, From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America, 1939-1959 (Ohio University Press, 2005).

Gillette, Howard, "The Evolution of the Planned Shopping Center in Suburb and City," Journal of the American Planning Association 51 (Autumn 1985), 449-460

Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon Books, 2003): (reader)

Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Donald Leslie Johnson, Frank Lloyd Wright Versus America: the 1930’s (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990).

William Harvey Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects: The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-Twentieth Century (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970). Cynthia Henhorn, From Submarines to Suburbs: Selling a Better America, 1939-1959 (Ohio University Press, 2005).

Barbara Kelly, Expanding the Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993).

David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Folke T. Kihlstedt, “Utopia Realized: The World’s Fairs of the 1930’s,” in Corn, ed., Imagining Tomorrow (MIT, 1986): 97-118 (reader)

Carol Krinsky, Rockefeller Center (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

William E. Leuchtenburg, The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920- 1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

Henry Matthews, “The Promotion of Modern Architecture by the Museum of Modern Art in the 1930’s,” Journal of Design History 7, 1 (1994): 43-59 (reader).

Timothy Mennel, “’Miracle House Hoop-La’: Corporate Rhetoric and the Construction of the Postwar American House,” JSAH 64, 3 (Sept., 2005): 340-

Jeffrey L. Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America, 1925-1939 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979).

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, ed., Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings, volume 3 (Rizzoli, 1993).

Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

Andrew M. Shanken, “Architectural Competitions and Bureaucracy, 1934-1945,” Architectural Research Quarterly 3 (1999): 43-56 (reader)

Robert A.M. Stern, “Three Modern Masters,” New York 1930 (Rizolli, 1987) (reader)

Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon, 1984) Allene Talmey, “Profiles: Man Against the Sky,” New Yorker 7 (April 11, 1931): 24-26 (reader)

Warren Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984).

Warren Susman, ed., Culture and Commitment, 1929-1945 (New York: G. Braziller, 1973)

Winston R. Weisman, “The First Landscaped Skyscraper,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 18 (May, 1959): 54-59 (reader)

Key primary sources from the 1930’s and 1940’s Catherine Bauer, American Housing (1934) Walter Curt Behrendt, Modern Building: Its Nature, Problems, and Forms (1937) Henry Churchill, The City Is the People (1945) Miles Colean, American Housing, Problems and Prospects (1945) Thomas Creighton, Building for Modern Man (1949) Clarence Dunham, Planning Your Home for Better Living (1945) Hugh Ferriss, Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929) Hugh Ferriss, Power in Buildings (1953) Norman Bel Geddes, Horizons (1932) Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command (1948) Percival and Paul Goodman, Communitas (1946) Guy Greer, The Problem of the Cities and Towns (1942) Guy Greer, Your City Tomorrow (1947) Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New City (1944) Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New Regional Pattern (1949) Joseph Hudnut, Architecture and the Spirit of Man (1949) Louis Justement, New Cities for Old (1946) Le Corbusier, City of Tomorrow and Its Planning (1929) Hugo Leipziger-Pearce, The City: The Housing and Community Plan (1942) William Lescaze, On Being an Architect (1942) Lewis Mumford’s City Development (1945) Cleveland Rodgers, American Planning Eliel Saarinen, The City: Its Growth, Its Decay, Its Future (1943) Eliel Saarinen, The Search for Form: a Fundamental Approach to Art (1949) Jose Luis Sert, Can Our Cities Survive (1942) Walter Dorwin Teague, Design This Day (1940) Walter Dorwin Teague, Land of Plenty: A Summary of Possibilities (1947) Frank Lloyd Wright, When Democracy Builds (1945) Paul Zucker, New Architecture and City Planning (1944)

Architectural Dictionaries I also recommend reading with an architecture dictionary nearby. The CED library has a full complement, but you may also choose to buy one. They are often available used online. The standard one is John Fleming, Hugh Honour and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture, which you can buy new or used. The most succinct dictionary, although it lacks biographical entries, is Henry Saylor, Dictionary of Architecture (out of print). James Stephens Curl, A Dictionary of Architecture is excellent, but it does not come cheaply.