
Building the Workingman's Paradise
The Design of American Company Towns
Margaret Crawford(Author)
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. February 1996
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-86091-421-1 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
This innovative and absorbing book surveys a little known chapter in the story of American urbanism-the history of communities built and owned by single companies seeking to bring their workers' homes and place of employment together on a single site. By 1930 more than two million people lived in such towns, dotted across an industrial frontier which stretched from Lowell, Massachusetts, through Torrance, California to Norris, Tennessee. Margaret Crawford focuses on the transformation of company town construction from the vernacular settlements of the late eighteenth century to the professional designs of architects and planners one hundred and fifty years later. Eschewing a static architectural approach which reads politics, history, and economics through the appearance of buildings, Crawford portrays the successive forms of company towns as the product of a dynamic process, shaped by industrial transformation, class struggle, and reformers' efforts to control and direct these forces.
Reviews / Votes
In her brilliant exploration of company towns from 1790 to 1925, Margaret Crawford has created the definitive book on this major topic in American economic and urban history, as well as a model of fine analytical writing about the politics of design. Her work reveals the potential of architectural history to illuminate the contested terrains of housing, urban design, and social life. -- Dolores Hayden, Professor of Architecture, Urbanism and American Studies, Yale University.More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 183 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
851 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-86091-421-1 (9780860914211)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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Book
02/1996
Verso Books
€28.50
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