Building a Market

by Harris, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780226317663
• ISBN10: 0226317668
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-27
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Each year, North Americans spend as much money fixing up their homes as they do buying new ones. This obsession with improving our dwellings has given rise to a multibillion-dollar industry that includes countless books, consumer magazines, a cable television network, and thousands of home improvement stores. Building a Marketcharts the rise of the home improvement industry in the United States and Canada from the end of World War I into the late 1950s. Drawing on the insights of business, social, and urban historians, and making use of a wide range of documentary sources, Richard Harris shows how the middle-class preference for home ownership first emerged in the 1920s-and how manufacturers, retailers, and the federal government combined to establish the massive home improvement market and a pervasive culture of Do-It-Yourself. Deeply insightful, Building a Marketis the carefully crafted history of the emergence and evolution of a home improvement revolution that changed not just American culture but the American landscape as well.

Table of Contents

List of abbreviations	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Origins
The Foundation of Home Ownership	p. 23
An Industry Unready to Improve	p. 54
The Realm of the Retailer	p. 75
The Birth of the Home Improvement Store	p. 98
Crisis, 1927-1945
A Perfect Storm for the Building Industry	p. 127
Manufacturers Save the Retailer	p. 161
The State Makes Credit	p. 190
Resolution, 1945-1960
Mr. and Mrs. Builder	p. 229
Help for the Amateur	p. 264
The Improvement Business Coalesces	p. 301
A Zelig of the American Cultural Economy	p. 335
Notes	p. 347
Index	p. 419
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