In the nineteenth century, architects and family reformers launched promotional campaigns portraying houses no longer as simply physical structures in which families lived but as emblems for family cohesiveness and identity. Clark explains why, despite the fear of standardization and homogenization, the middle class has persisted in viewing the single-family home as the main symbol of independence as as the distinguishing sign of having achieved middle-class status.

This book presents both nationally significant objects and ordinary items from everyday life to provide insight into 19th century American society, showing readers how the production, design, function, and use of these objects can inform our understanding of the period. Artifacts from 19th Century America examines a broad array of objects representing various aspects of 19th century American society. The objects have been chosen to illuminate daily life in a number of categories including cooking, entertainment, grooming, clothing and accessories, health, household items, religious life, work, and education. The book's 53 entries include a brief introduction to the background of the object, when and why it was made, and who used it, followed by a detailed description of the object itself. Finally, each entry provides a deep dive into the object's significance and how the object reveals clues about the social, political, economic, and intellectual life of the society in which it was produced and utilized. Students and general readers alike will not only learn about the time period but also learn to use the skills of material culture theory and method, including how to draw meaningful conclusions from each object about their historical context and significance.

In the 1880s, socio-economic and technological changes in the United States contributed to the rejection of Christian architectural traditions and the development of the radically new auditorium church. Jeanne Kilde links this shift in evangelical Protestant architecture to changes in worship style and religious mission.

are often lined with garages in front of houses that are clearly more internalized in design, some even taking on a fortress-like appearance. Today's new homes are technically superior in construction; i.e., they are more energy efficient, weather resistant and maintenance free. However, they also seem to lack the warmth and charm of prewar homes, for which more construction dollars were spent on quality veneers, buUt-in features and other human-scale details. The postwar need for massive amounts of "affordable" housing for returning GIs helped to encourage buUding practices that could reduce on-site labor and material costs in houses. The accommodation of the automobile, cost-cutting movements and a variety of other trends caused a gradual decline in the human, social and emotional qualities of postwar residential architecture. This book will attempt to look at the issues and choices facing today's residential designers and home buUders and ask: How can we make our new houses and neighborhoods more responsive to humanistic needs, partlcularly in light of constant pressures to keep housing costs down? This question will generally be addressed by comparing historical designs to those of today, to see if we might be able to reconsider some "old-fashioned" ideas in new housing designs.

The concern today about suburban sprawl is not new. In the decades after World War II, the spread of tract-house construction changed the nature of millions of acres of land, and a variety of Americans began to protest against the environmental costs of suburban development. By the mid-1960s, indeed, many of the critics were attempting to institutionalize an urban land ethic. The Bulldozer in the Countryside was the first scholarly work to analyze the successes and failures of the varied efforts to address the environmental consequences of suburban growth from 1945 to 1970. For scholars and students of American history, the book offers a compelling insight into two of the great stories of modern times - the mass migration to the suburbs and the rise of the environmental movement. The book also offers a valuable historical perspective for participants in contemporary debates about the alternatives to sprawl.

Clashes over the American family and its values have always implicitly or explicitly addressed issues of gender and highlighted the significance of present and future families to American society. This is the insight underpinning Isabel Heinemann’s groundbreaking study, which traces, over the course of the twentieth century, debates on the family and its role; the relationship between the individual and society; and individual decision-making rights as well as their denial or curtailment. Unpacking these issues in a vivid and innovative analysis, the book recounts the prehistory of current conflicts over the family and gender while illuminating the relationship between social change, normative shifts, and the counter-movements spawned in response to them.

"This work uses the history of American funeral homes to reimagine the beginnings of our decentralized consumer landscape"--