Building a Market The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914-1960
Synopsis
Each year, North Americans spend as much money fixing up their homes as they do buying new ones. This obsession with improving our 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.Building a Market 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, Richard Harris 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.
Deeply insightful, Building a Market is the carefully crafted history of the emergence and evolution of a home improvement revolution that changed not just American culture but the American landscape as well.
Book details
- Series:
- Historical Studies of Urban America
- Author:
- Richard Harris
- ISBN:
- 9780226317687
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780226317663
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- Pages:
- 431
- Reading age:
- Not specified
- Includes images:
- No
- Date of addition:
- 2020-12-26
- Usage restrictions:
- Copyright
- Copyright date:
- 2012
- Copyright by:
- N/A
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Categories:
- Business and Finance, History, Nonfiction