"The Urban Department Store in America, 1850?930 "In the late nineteenth century, the urban department store arose as a built artifact and as a social institution in the United States. While the physical building type is the foundation of this comprehensive architectural study, Louisa Iarocci reaches beyond the analysis of the bricks and mortar to reconsider how the ?spaces of selling? were culturally-produced spaces, as well as the product of interrelated economic, social, technological and aesthetic forces. The agenda of the book is three-fold; to address the lack of a comprehensive architectural study of the nineteenth century department store in the United States; to expand the analysis of the commercial city as a built and represented entity; and to continue recent scholarly efforts that seek to understand commercial space as a historically specific and a conceptually perceived construct. The Urban Department Store in America, 1850-1930 acts as a corrective to a current imbalance in the historiography of this retailing institution that tends to privilege its role as an autonomous ?modern? building type. Instead, Iarocci documents the development of the department store as an urban institution that grew out of the built space of the city and the lived spaces of its occupants. |
Contents
List of Figures | |
The Commercial Metropolis | |
Street Architecture and the Mercantile House | |
The Factory and the Fair | |
Constructing a Modern Typology | |
The World a Department Store | |
Across the Sales Counter | |
The Titan City and the Budget House | |
Bibliography | |
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Common terms and phrases
A.T. Stewart advertising American Department Stores April Architects Architectural Record artifact Author’s Collection Big Store Bird’s Eye View Boston Builders building type Cambridge Chicago clerk clothing commercial city commercial palace Company consumption crowd customers decorative department store described Directory display economic employees Everybody’s exhibition façade female Figure Girl Golden Book Grand Depot History Home Journal Iarocci identified Illustrated industrial interior John Wanamaker Jordan Marsh June Ladies Library of Congress London Lord & Taylor Macy’s manufacturing Market Marshall Field mass men’s mercantile house merchandise merchants Modern Store nineteenth century Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pictorial popular production promotional provides retailing institution Roadtown rooms Safety Last sales counter sales floor scene Scribner’s Magazine Seattle Public Library selling Shop Girl shopper Siegel-Cooper Sigfried Giedion social space spatial Stewart Street Titan City Trade Card University Press urban Wanamaker Store Wanamaker’s William window Woman’s women York