Tastemaker: Elizabeth Gordon, House Beautiful, and the Postwar American Home

261 Pages·2017·30.247 MB·English

by  Monica Penick

Tastemaker
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Monica Penick
Tastemaker
Elizabeth Gordon, House Beautiful, and the Postwar American Home
Yale University Press
New Haven and London
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Copyright © 2017 by Monica Penick.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections
107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers
for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
yalebooks.com/art
Designed by Yve Ludwig
Set in Chronicle Text and Avenir by Yve Ludwig
Printed in China by Regent Publishing Services Limited
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940999
ISBN 978-0-300-22176-3
eISBN 978-0-300-22845-8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
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Preface vii
Prologue 1
1 Beginnings 3
2 Good Taste and Better Living 9
3 The Postwar House 23
4 The Pace Setter House 37
5 Climate Control 62
6 A New Look 82
7 The American Style 96
8 The Threat to the Next America 115
9 A New Alliance 129
10 The Next American House 148
11 A New Regionalism 165
12 Which Way, America? 179
13 American Shibui 195
14 Catalyst 211
Epilogue 217
Abbreviations 219
Notes 220
Acknowledgments 237
Index 239
Illustration Credits 248
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Preface
When I began the long adventure of writing Tastemaker, who appear briefly in this book, Edward Bernays and
I was interested in the evolution of the postwar Ameri- Christine McGaffey Frederick. Their lines of inquiry took
can house, with its multiplicity of modern forms and a variety of forms and served many purposes. The goal
cultural meanings. I was fascinated by the range of char- was generally threefold: to investigate consumers’ needs,
acters involved: architects, designers, craftsmen, build- wants, and actions; to test new products against consumer
ers, manufacturers, retailers, and real estate developers interest; and (eventually) to use this feedback to inform the
who had left their mark, however distinct or faint, on the design, production, sales, and consumption of products.
American landscape. But as I worked—in a subject area The protagonist of this book, former House Beautiful
and time period that were still virtually undiscovered—I editor-in-chief Elizabeth Gordon, was equally engaged in
began to look beyond what I thought was the heart of the quest to understand and influence consumer choice,
the story, beyond the house itself, beyond its designers, specifically in the realm of domestic architecture and design.
beyond its makers. What I found there, on the periphery, She was fascinated by American taste—or as she put it, “why
was an entirely new plot and a new cast of characters. you like what you like, and what you are probably going
Chief among them were the consumers (most often the to like in the future.”2 She asked this very question, most
American family) for whom the postwar house was built, directly in 1946, from the vantage point of a shelter maga-
and the popular home or “shelter” magazines that pro- zine editor in need of perspective and some monthly con-
moted and indeed sold the idea of the postwar house and tent; I asked it, decades later, as a historian curious about
its domestic trappings to the public. how Gordon answered, and what her experience might tell
The question then became not what happened to the us about the process of taste formation, design consump-
American house in the two decades that followed the Sec- tion, design production, and design mediation that remains
ond World War, but who (or what) really made that some- in place even today within contemporary shelter magazines
thing happen? This opened still another broad, cultural such as Dwell, or multimedia outlets such as HGTV.
question: Why do Americans like what they like, buy Gordon’s questioning, and my own that followed, sug-
what they buy, and build what they build?1 gested an alternative way to unpack the history of the
This was not, of course, a new question. In the United postwar American house. Perhaps architect George Nel-
States, questions of consumer desire, taste, and choice son, writing in 1948, saw it most clearly: “Most of what hap-
were posed as early as the 1920s by professionals engaged pens to architecture is out of the hands of the architects.”3
in the emerging field of consumer study and market There were “other forces” at play, forces that, as Nelson
research. Among the most influential were two figures suggested, profoundly shaped architecture—including
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contemporary design discourse, social attitudes, con- Because Gordon became such a galvanizing figure, her
sumer power (both in terms of buying practices and mar- influence on American taste and American design—and,
ket influence), personal taste, individual identity, and an with it, the role of the shelter press that she represents—
emerging sense of a collective “Americanness.” I argue has been difficult to assess critically. With this book, I
here that the shelter press, led by powerful editors such have tried to do both.
as Gordon, informed and influenced all of these forces. Gordon’s editorship and her role within American
design offer a compelling case study with larger implica-
What follows is a design history, in the inclusive if tions for the history of American architecture and design.
still-evolving meaning of that term: it is the study of First, while many scholars have examined the contribu-
postwar American design, with culture, politics, and eco- tions of individual architects and designers, few have
nomics as backdrop; it is an architectural history, with assessed those of the professionals who popularized and
architects and houses as star players; it is a critical biogra- sold design to the American public. Gordon was one of
phy, with a magazine editor as protagonist; and it is a study those figures, significant because she exerted influence
of a creative process, with print representation, cross-me- from a position often considered peripheral, and from
dia methods, and editorial tactics as evidence.4 In the a “popular” platform often deemed inconsequential by
broadest sense, though, this is a story about influence. some architects, historians, and critics of her time and
ours. Perhaps more remarkably, Gordon often worked
From her offices on Madison Avenue, Elizabeth Gordon in opposition (sometimes with open antagonism) to the
navigated a design revolution that spanned the hopeful dominant cultural institutions and professional journals
(if restrained) war years, the optimistic postwar period, that historically controlled matters of design taste and
and the anxious Cold War decades. Her story, set against design production. This book, then, broadens our under-
this changing historical backdrop, pivots at significant standing of the power players who have shaped the world
moments when Gordon responded, with lightning speed, of architecture and design.
to this shifting world. The narrative arc of this book is pos- Second, because Gordon positioned herself as a medi-
sible, in part, because Gordon’s own editorials traversed ator among the design profession, the building and home
a national crisis of culture, politics, and economics—and furnishings industry, and the consumer (her readers),
she embedded her editorial campaigns and critiques this study of her methods considers design evolution and
within this larger contemporary context. design tastes from the intersection of all of these groups.
Gordon’s story is fascinating and at moments truly Third, the designs (including houses, furnishings,
theatrical because she worked so many angles: she was textiles, and other household objects) that Gordon used
a reporter, editor, advocate, critic, trendsetter, and tas- to convey her message have been eclipsed by a small set
temaker. She worked on behalf of the American public of well-studied examples—for example Arts & Architec-
(which paralleled her magazine’s commercial interest) ture’s Case Study Houses. This has limited and skewed
to forge a common cause for good design. In this struggle, our understanding of design history. The evidence that I
she did not work alone. She united consumers, designers, use in this book, drawn from the pages of House Beauti-
manufacturers, and retailers in her cause. She navigated ful, opens a dialogue about the full range of what was cre-
and bridged all four worlds, and for many years held a ated, published, sold, and bought in America during the
comfortable place on the sidelines of design discourse postwar years.
and practice. Last, my use of Gordon’s House Beautiful as an object
This all changed in 1953. Her scandalous editorial “The of study and as a material archive expands design schol-
Threat to the Next America” was the watershed moment. arship in terms of both content and method. Architec-
The “Threat” episode (which I recount in Chapter 8) is the tural historians often focus on buildings, architects, or,
moment for which she was both celebrated and detested. more recently, professional architectural journals; my
But this is only a small part of her story, and the only chap- work examines a new set of sources that may have been
ter that design history has, up to now, recorded. The rest on the fringes of the design profession but—especially
of her story, told for the first time in this book, spans two with regard to public opinion—were equally significant.
full decades and scores of pioneering editorial projects. House Beautiful becomes a perfect case study precisely
viii Preface
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because it was a popular “shelter” magazine (this term to construct an untold narrative of American design, but
was used sparingly in the late 1940s, coming into vogue a good deal of my effort was spent trying to “find” Eliza-
only recently), one that dealt exclusively with domestic beth Gordon. Along the way—a sixteen-year journey that
architecture, interiors, home furnishings, gardening, started with my doctoral dissertation and culminates with
and, most importantly, domestic life; “family life” was this book—a few other scholars have picked up the trail
the implied subject, but child-rearing, for example, was and uncovered valuable materials including, most nota-
rarely an editorial focus. With this comprehensive pro- bly, Kathleen Corbett, whose 2010 dissertation examines
gramming, House Beautiful’s audience was broad; it was Gordon’s “The Threat to the Next America,” and Jenni-
not just for women or housewives, it was for all Ameri- fer A. Watts, whose edited volume on the photographer
cans (designers included) interested in “bettering” their Maynard L. Parker frames Gordon in light of the postwar
home lives. The magazine, architectural yet free from American dream, much of which she developed alongside
professional pretension, could show American design her favorite photographer, Parker.5
from the vantage point of editors, critics, retailers, and Still, Gordon was an elusive figure. Her papers have not
consumers. And it could, by 1965, reach more than a mil- been collected, outside the small shibui collection held at
lion people every month. Until recently, shelter maga- the Smithsonian’s Freer Sackler Archive. Her personal
zines have been underutilized, undervalued, or simply life remains shrouded in mystery. We may never know
ignored. My work establishes the value of examining why she loved Adrian suits and Robert Dudley hats, why
design from this alternative perspective. she kept an apartment in Manhattan in the mid-1950s
(other than to ease the daily commute from her home in
Dobbs Ferry), why she and her husband, Carl, never had
On Sources, Method, and Structure
children, or how she spent her leisure time (other than
When I began this project in 2001, the literature on reading voraciously, collecting handcrafted pottery, and
postwar designers and the postwar house—in any style assembling an impressive assortment of Japanese design).
or for any demographic—was scant, studies of architec- Her personal story may remain private, buried with the
ture and the media were scarce (though Beatriz Colo- many friends and colleagues who passed away before her,
mina has done much to remedy this), and histories of but her professional story is here for the reading.
the shelter press were nonexistent. In recent years, Much of the book’s narrative, then, pivots on Gordon
scholarship on postwar design has rapidly expanded. and her professional life. She was a dynamic and contro-
The first efforts were positioned within a relatively nar- versial figure who navigated a complicated moment in the
row cultural framework, or drew from a small body of history of American design. She edited House Beautiful
canonical works (for example, the Case Study Houses), during the entire postwar period, from 1941 to 1964; her
or remained focused on well-known figures (for example, long tenure, so unusual in her field, allowed me to fully
Mies van der Rohe). More recent studies have pushed examine the evolution of domestic architecture, con-
these boundaries, including the works of historians such temporary debates surrounding modernism, changing
as Alice T. Friedman, Dianne Harris, Andrew Shanken, notions of domesticity and lifestyle, and shifting design
and, more recently, Barbara Miller Lane and James A. tastes, all from within the framework of one publication.
Jacobs. With these exemplary studies in the background, Though the magazine evolved and its content changed,
I hope to open a new window that frames postwar design Gordon was remarkably consistent: she established her
within a shifting cultural moment colored by tense pol- editorial agenda early on (by 1943) and spent two decades
itics, burgeoning (and problematic) consumerism, fluid supporting it. She did so with foresight, intelligence, dis-
tastes, and contested identities. cernment, and dexterity—and this translated to tremen-
I chose to study House Beautiful for two reasons: the dous professional power.
magazine itself, and its editor. Though my focus was nar- My approach is, of course, not without shortcomings.
row, my research was expansive. I augmented my close As with any detailed study of a singular subject or per-
reading of House Beautiful (twenty-five years of back son, there are limits. A comparative study of all Ameri-
issues) with substantial archival digging that traversed can shelter magazines or all of the editors working in the
fifteen repositories across the United States. My goal was postwar period would be compelling. But that would take
Preface ix
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