Designing Modern America
Broadway to Main Street
From the 1920s through the 1950s, two individuals, Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, did more, by far, to create the image of 'America' and make it synonymous with modernity than any of their contemporaries. Urban and Bel Geddes were leading Broadway stage designers and directors who turned their prodigious talents to other projects, becoming mavericks first in industrial design and then in commercial design, fashion, architecture, and more. The two men gave shape to the most quintessential symbols of the modern American lifestyle, including movies, cars, department stores and nightclubs, along with private homes, kitchens, stoves, fridges, magazines and numerous household furnishings. Christopher Innes shows how these two men with a background in theatre lent dramatic flair to everything they designed and how this theatricality gave the distinctive modernity they created such wide appeal. If the American lifestyle has been much imitated across the globe over the past fifty years, says Innes, it is due in large measure to the designs of Urban and Bel Geddes. Together they were responsible for creating what has been called the 'Golden Age' of American culture.
About the Author
Christopher Innes is Canada Research Chair in Performance and Culture at York University, Toronto.
Reviews
"Even aficionados of modern American design will be astonished by the prodigious talents and ambitions of Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, as chronicled by author Christopher Innes in 'Designing Modern America: Broadway to Main Street'. This fascinating account traces the connections between Urban's and Bel Geddes's theatrical productions on Broadway and their iconic consumer products that defined the look of 'The American Century' for much of the western world. This story of their less-known efforts to create a holistic modernism that encompassed the entire environment, from model kitchens to model cities, with fashion, cars, movies, household furnishings, world's fairs, low-cost housing, and factories in between, represents a significant contribution to our understanding of these two pioneer industrial designers and their role in the history of American design" – Natalie Shivers, co-author, "L.A'.s Early Moderns: Art/Architecture/Photography"
