"Live Better Where You Are": Home Improvement And The Rhetoric Of Renewal In The Postwar United States

While sinuous rows of new suburban ramblers remain the predominant symbol of post-World War II housing in the United States, the upgrading of existing homes was an equally essential component of the era's popular and building culture. Businesses, government agencies, academia, mass media, designers, and homeowners promoted postwar home improvement-sometimes in collaboration, often in competition for market share, consumer dollars, and professional authority. Negotiating realignments of expertise, these groups saw renewal as a national imperative, a moral virtue, and social reward. They reinterpreted traditional notions of the home as symbol of stability and security, not through timeless permanence but through perpetual change. This study examines residential architecture as a temporal space, repeatedly reconfigured as a vehicle for self-expression and in response to shifting cultural priorities. It argues that home improvement, marketed and advertised, embraced and co-opted, drew rhetorical potency from established American attitudes toward personal reinvention and a privileging of the new. The dissertation does not attempt to offer a complete history of postwar home improvement. Rather, it identifies specific episodes and interpretive lenses that offer insights into the depth and breadth of postwar remodeling activities and the ways in which a nation's culture can provide a rhetorical foundation for reshaping its built environment

A-frame /

Includes bibliographical references and index.A-frame antecedents to 1950 -- The right shape at the right time -- Setting the stage, 1950-1957 -- Popularity, plan books, and promotion, 1958-1962 -- A-frame apogee, 1962-1972 -- Beyond the vacation home -- A cultural and marketing icon