Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914-1960
Richard Harris
Abstract
Each year, North Americans spend as much money fixing up their homes as they do buying new ones. This obsession with improving their dwellings has given rise to a multibillion-dollar industry that includes countless books, consumer magazines, a cable television network, and thousands of home improvement stores. This book charts the rise of the home improvement industry in the United States and Canada from the end of World War I into the late 1950s. Drawing on the insights of business, social, and urban historians, and making use of a wide range of documentary sources, it shows how the middle-c ... More
Each year, North Americans spend as much money fixing up their homes as they do buying new ones. This obsession with improving their dwellings has given rise to a multibillion-dollar industry that includes countless books, consumer magazines, a cable television network, and thousands of home improvement stores. This book charts the rise of the home improvement industry in the United States and Canada from the end of World War I into the late 1950s. Drawing on the insights of business, social, and urban historians, and making use of a wide range of documentary sources, it shows how the middle-class preference for home ownership first emerged in the 1920s—and how manufacturers, retailers, and the federal government combined to establish the massive home improvement market and a pervasive culture of do-it-yourself. The book provides the history of the emergence and evolution of a home improvement revolution that changed not just American culture but the American landscape as well.
Keywords:
consumer magazines,
cable television network,
home improvement,
home ownership,
manufacturers,
retailers,
federal government,
do-it-yourself,
United States,
Canada
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226317663 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: September 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226317687.001.0001 |
