Architecture in Depression and War
AS101, Section 2
Spring, 2006: TuTh 12:30-2pm (Kroeber 155)
Prof. Andrew M. Shanken
Office Hours: Th 2:30-4:30
ashanken@berkeley.edu
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), ashanken@berkeley.edu.
*Walk-ins are welcome, but to guarantee a spot please sign up on the sheet on my office
door ahead of time.
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: There is a blackboard site for this class; you will need to register for this at
blackboard.berkeley.edu. Slide lectures will be posted, as will most handouts.
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.
Sessions
J17: Introduction: Architecture in Depression and War: Themes and Issues
J19: Looking at Architecture-guided discussion through the reading
- Reading: O’Gorman, ABC of Architecture (entire)
J24: Architecture Before the Crash: The Roaring ‘20’s-lecture
J26: 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)
Writing: Formal Analysis due in class
J31: Alphabet Soup Architecture-lecture: PWA, WPA, CCC, TVA
- 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.
F2: Better Living: From the Federal Housing Administration to DuPont-lecture and
discussion
- Reading:
1. Andrew M. Shanken, “Architectural Competitions and Bureaucracy, 19341945,” Architectural Research Quarterly 3 (1999): 43-56 (reader)
2. Optional Reading: Cynthia Henhorn, From Submarines to Suburbs.
 Note: Final Project Assignment will be handed out this week.
F7: 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)
F9: 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)
F14: Wright Reborn: The Third Career of Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre, Usonian,
Johnson Wax, Falling Water, and Guggenheim
F16: 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
F21: Library Visit
F23: Archives Visit (Shanken out of town for CAA Conference)
- Reading: Begin reading Giedion, Space Time and Architecture
- Note: There is a lot of reading and research due next week. Please take
advantage of the light load this week to begin both.
F28: Bay Area Modernism: Wurster et. al.
- Reading:
1. Excerpt from Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region (reader)
M2: Space Time and Architecture-a discussion
- Reading: Finish Giedion, Space Time and Architecture
M7: The Rise of Industrial Design-lecture
M9: 1939 World’s Fair: A Tale of Two Cities-visiting lecture by Prof. Moran
- 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.
M14: Havens House by H. H. Harris-tour
M16: The Fountainhead-discussion
- Reading: Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
M21: The Architecture of 194X-lecture
M23: Planning as Culture-discussion with images
- Reading: Andrew Shanken, “Planning Culture” (Blackboard)
- Writing: Architectural Rags Paper due in class Thursday
March 27-31: Spring Break
A4: Architecture and Advertising during World War II-discussion/lecture
A6: Dreamhouse Hoopla
- Reading:
- 1. Timothy Mennel, “’Miracle House Hoop-La’: Corporate Rhetoric and the
Construction of the Postwar American House,” JSAH 64, 3 (Sept., 2005): 340361 (reader)
A11: Scrapbook Planning
A13: Architecture and Planning in 194X (short lecture) and New York in 194X-Images
driven discussion
- Reading: None (so that you can be writing!)
- Writing: Rough draft of final paper due
A18: The End of Planning: Anti-Futurism during the War, Planning after the War.
- Reading:
- 1. Andrew M. Shanken, “The End of Planning” (Blackboard)
A20: Levittown
- Reading:
- 1. Dolores Hayden, selection from Building Suburbia (reader and this is also
available online through Melvyl)
A25: The Mall, the Supermarket, Mainstreet and Modernization—
- 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)
A27: SAH Conference—Shanken out of town: Peer editing of final papers in class, led by
Emily Felt.
M2: War and the New Scale: The United Nations, the Pentagon (and King Kong)
M4: Conclusions
- Writing: Final Papers Due in class
Assignments and percentage of grade
1. Formal Analysis (1-2 pp.)
January 26
2. Architectural Rags Paper (3-4 pp.) March 23
3. Final Paper: 6-8 pages

Topic:
Feb. 16

Topic Sentence/Biblio.:
March 9

Draft due:
April 13

Final Paper due:
May 4
4. Pop Quizzes
5. Final Exam (time and format T.B.A.)
10%
20%
40%
10% of final paper
10% of final paper
40% of final paper
40% of final paper
10%
20%
Pop Quiz Policy:
In lieu of a mid-term exam, I reserve the right to give up to four 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.
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, 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. DO NOT ASK ME FOR
EXTENSIONS. 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 above, 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, 19201940 (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): 340Jeffrey 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.