1 The Modernize Main Street campaign created during the Depression years
2 represented a significant effort to revitalize the central business dis-
3 tricts of American communities [#note1]_.
5 Promoted through trade journals and design competitions, the
6 idea of updating commercial buildings with modern materials and streamlined
7 design was therefore, one way of renewing citizen’s interest in
10 Prior to the 1920s, most American citizens tended to “make do” and reuse
11 material goods instead of purchasing new items each year [#note4]_.
13 Advertising strategies to convince people to buy products that were not
14 absolute necessities for daily life (or were absolutely needed at the time)
15 soon became the focus of marketing executives [#note5]_.
17 Popular magazines with mass distribution like *Ladies’ Home Journal* and *The
18 Saturday Evening Post* dis- played suggestive advertisements instilling a
19 desire for consumable products. Marketing ideas based on planned obsolescence
20 and repackaged goods encour- aged a development of this “modern” consumer
23 An increased cultural emphasis on consumption as a capitalist value challenged
24 Puritan morals which began to decline by the end of the 1920s [#note7]_.
27 1938 [*]_. $112,457,506
29 1939 [*]_. $112,457,506
42 .. [*] There was a recession in 1938 which dampened spending on modernizing.
43 The 1938 figure, however, was still above the spending of 1936.
45 .. [*] second ere was a recession in 1938 which dampened spending on modernizing.
46 The 1938 figure, however, was still above the spending of 1936.
49 .. [#note1] Esperdy, Gabrielle. “Modernizing Main Street: Everyday Architecture and
50 the New Deal.” Dissertation. (The City University of New York, 1999). Ann
51 Arbor, Michigan: UMI, 2000, 327.
55 .. [#note2] Gebhard, David. *Art Deco in America*. (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
59 .. [#note4] Horowitz, Daniel. *The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Towards the
60 Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940*. Baltimore: John Hopkins University
63 .. [#note5] Filene, Edward A. *The Next Steps in Retailing*. (New York: Harper and
64 Brothers, Inc., 1937): 2
66 .. [#note6] Ewan, Stuart. *All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary
67 Culture*. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988, 47.
69 .. [#note7] Horowitz, Daniel. *The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Towards the Con-
70 sumer Society in America, 1875-1940*, 134-135.