Pedestrian Modern: Shopping and American Architecture, 1925–1956

TWO: Machines for Selling

That the editors of Architectural Forum could claim in 1940 that modernism was uniquely suited to the design of stores no doubt raised some eyebrows. Other critics were more circumspect, wondering if the adoption of the modern was “sometimes for efficiency, sometimes for publicity, sometimes to be ‘smart.’”1 In 1939, Forum editors noted that “the dramatic attention getting qualities of modern architecture” could serve as an “extra salesman,” and while this was certainly not the highest compliment in aesthetic or professional terms, they went on to praise the store in the already normative language of modernism. More than in other types of commissions, in store work, “form must follow practically in function’s footprints.” The modern store was said to emerge from coordination of programming, planning, and new technologies. Progress in American architecture, they wrote, was most evident in the design of shops.2 T WO MACHINES FOR SELLING Functionalism is an overworked word. Nevertheless the remarkable progress in design for shops and stores is based largely on a new understanding of the meaning of functional design. The shop exists for trade: it can only serve to attract customers and to please them once they are inside. . . . In no field has the triumph of the modern architect been more complete. Reasons: the comparative lack of prejudice against change in the commercial field, and the necessity for every shopkeeper to meet the highest standards set by his competitors. —“Design Decade,” Architectural Forum, October 1940 51 l By 1940, form following function might already have been a cliché, but its rhetorical power was more than evident, and in design terms, modernism and the architecture of merchandising maintained a useful partnership. Architects and critics praised the arcade and the “open front” all-glazed store design techniques for making the “transition from pavement to interior painless.” Standing just outside one store, Architectural Record editors wrote, “produces a sensation . . . of being already within the store.”3 Bringing together modernist methods and formal techniques with the desideratum of selling goods was firmly established in the 1940s; no longer radical, it became conventional and normative. This chapter explains how particular modernist tenets in the 1940s were infused and entwined with store design, each lending credibility and legitimacy to the other. The first part of the chapter describes four architects whose practices were deeply embedded in the commercial world, in store design, and in the professional debates about retailing. The work of the four—Victor Gruen, Morris Ketchum, Morris Lapidus , and Kenneth Welch—was also unevenly woven into modernist discourse. All of these architects maintained different relations to debates, institutions, and outlets for the framing of modern architecture, and all were aware of the questions raised by retailing work in the status-conscious professional world. They were deeply interested in the logic and trajectory of modernism and, in the 1940s, played a role in making those principles part of the architectural landscape and of architectural discourse. This included the reach of architectural media, including magazines, catalogs, monographs , and conferences, treated in the latter half of this chapter. Considering the breadth of discussion about modernism and merchandising, it is more than notable that store work later came to stand outside the historiographic picture of modernism , hidden in plain sight. Victor Gruen, Showman Victor Gruen claimed to be a “contemporary” architect, not a modern architect. Modern architects, he often said, were too concerned with style, status, and an image of restraint and abstraction, whereas the “contemporary” label enabled the architect to act as both a researcher and a “client advocate.”4 The contemporary architect is pragmatic and takes the time to create form through understanding client needs and program functions; only in this manner, said Gruen, could a true modernism be sustained. He asserted that professional elites supported overly aesthetic standards that had little basis in the lived experience of most people. In his opinion, modernism had already become primarily a form-giving enterprise, cut off from needs and quotidian concerns, and he was happy to challenge the situation. Gruen was quite comfortable mixing art and commerce, and for him, merchandising was just another program. Staking out a professional position as an ardent spokesman for the pragmatic needs of his clients, including store owners, he was both keenly 52 MACHINES FOR SELLING aware and unafraid of cultural questions about consumption, and he later became a lightning rod for criticism in debates about the status of merchandising work...