The readi-cut dream: the mail-order house catalogs of the Aladdin Company, 1906-1920
| Author(s) | Erbes, Scott Steven | |
| Date Accessioned | 2020-05-22T15:15:01Z | |
| Date Available | 2020-05-22T15:15:01Z | |
| Publication Date | 1990 | |
| Abstract | This thesis uses the 1906 to 1920 mail-order house catalogs of the Aladdin Company to examine the reality and rhetoric of architecture associated with the early twentieth century's middle class. In terms of architecture, the catalogs illustrate 153 models and their plans. Analysis of the plans reveals the impact of standardized design and the process of spatial change on early twentieth-century houses. Opposed to architectural reality is architectural rhetoric. The rhetoric of architecture encoded in the catalogs may be broken down into three categories: aesthetics, practicality, and comfort. Each category reflects a tension between late nineteenth-century attitudes and the ideals promoted by early twentieth-century reformers like Gustav Stickley. Often, women are associated with both the Victorian cult of domesticity and the early twentieth-century domestic science movement. The rhetoric of Aladdin's 1906 to 1920 catalogs thus presents the home in idealistic, rather than realistic terms. | en_US |
| Advisor | Herman, Bernard L. | |
| Degree | M.A. | |
| Program | University of Delaware, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture | |
| Unique Identifier | 1155201190 | |
| URL | http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/27170 | |
| Publisher | University of Delaware | en_US |
| URI | https://search.proquest.com/docview/303852447?accountid=10457 | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Aladdin Company | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Prefabricated houses | |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Architecture, Domestic -- United States | |
| Title | The readi-cut dream: the mail-order house catalogs of the Aladdin Company, 1906-1920 | en_US |
| Type | Thesis | en_US |