About Building The DreamFor Gwendolyn Wright, the houses of America are the diaries of the American people. They create a fascinating chronicle of the way we have lived, and a reflection of every political, economic, or social issue we have been concerned with. Why did plantation owners build uniform cabins for their slaves? Why were all the walls in nineteenth-century tenements painted white? Why did the parlor suddenly disappear from middle-class houses at the turn of the century? How did the federal highway system change the way millions of Americans raised their families?Building the Dream introduces the parade of people, policies, and ideologies that have shaped the course of our daily lives by shaping the rooms we have grown up in. In the row houses of colonial Philadelphia, the luxury apartments of New York City, the prefab houses of Levittown, and the public-housing towers of Chicago, Wright discovers revealing clues to our past and a new way of looking at such contemporary issues as integration, sustainable energy, the needs of the elderly, and how we define “family.”.
Table Of ContentsList of Illustrations viiAcknowledgments xiiiIntroduction xvPART ONE: FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIAL ORDER 11. The Puritan Way of Life 3PART TWO: STRUCTURES OF AMERICAN NATIONALISM 192.
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Row Upon Row in the Commercial City 243. The “Big House” and the Slave Quarters 414. Housing Factory Workers 585. Independence and the Rural Cottage 73PART THREE: ACCOMMODATIONS FOR AN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 916. Victorian Suburbs and the Cult of Domesticity 967. Americanization and Ethnicity in Urban Tenements 1148.
The Advantages of Apartment Life 135PART FOUR: DOMESTICATION OF MODERN LIVING 1539. The Progressive Housewife and the Bungalow 15810. Welfare Capitalism and the Company Town 17711. Planned Residential Communities 193PART FIVE: GOVERNMENT STANDARDS FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES 21512.
Public Housing for the Worthy Poor 22013. The New Suburban Expansion and the American Dream 24014. Preserving Homes and Promoting Change 262Notes 285Further Reading 302Index 319.