Richard Longstreth

The Diffusion of the Community Shopping Center Concept during the Interwar Decades

The 1920s and 1930s were crucial decades in laying the groundwork for the shopping center as a major force in retail development during the second half of the twentieth century. The concept of the shopping center as a fully integrated business enterprise became significantly more sophisticated and ambitious. Sizable complexes were initiated that included at least several dozen businesses purveying not only routine goods and services, but a variety of more specialized ones as well. Thus cast, the shopping center became more than a place of convenience; it formed a destination-a focus of activity and a physical landmark in the fast-growing suburban landscape. Despite their pivotal role, these large community shopping centers remained few in number during the initial decades of their development. The projects that were undertaken were experimental, and hence tentative in nature. They were also highly individualistic in appearance and other physical characteristics, reflecting the vision and the taste of the developers who created them. Many were integral parts of comprehensively planned residential communities and were conceived as much to control and contain commerce as to foster it. In such ways, this first generation of large shopping centers offer conspicuous contrast with their post-World War II offspring. Their influence on later work was nonetheless crucial, for they demonstrated the advantages of meticulous planning and management in the fiercely competitive area.

Architectural History and the Practice of Historic Preservation in the United States

e late 1960s and early 1970s were crucial years for both the discipline of architectural history and Sthe field of historic preservation. Long seen by scholars as no more than a secondary subject area-a suitable diversion for architects and antiquarians, but lacking the substance for rigorous academic inquiry-the history of American architecture was beginning to be considered as a respectable, even important, concentration in its own right. Equally significant was the rise of new approaches to studying the subject, informed by methods developed in anthropology, cultural geography, folk life, and social and urban history, as well as the integrating interdisciplinary perspective of American studies.1 Academic institutions contributed significantly to this shift, but so too did outdoor museums such as Old Sturbridge Village, Plimouth Plantation, and St. Marys City.2 At the same time, passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 gave the United States its first comprehensive, federally sponsored program to record and protect significant properties, creating an unprecedented demand for expertise in architectural history and related disciplines. The new, rapidly evolving infrastructure of the preservation movement provided a fertile training ground for many young historians whose work has had a major impact on the field. Since then, the preservation movement has documented more of the built environment in the United States than had occurred in all other periods in the nations history combined. Local and statewide surveys; comm n ty-based landmark and historic-district nominations, as well as those for the National Register; National Historic Landmark studies; projects of the Historic American Buildings Survey and the Historic American Enginee ing Record, and undertakings modeled on them; compliance-generated documentation; and numerous additional ve tures have resulted in the gathering of an immense amou t of material.

The Neighborhood Shopping Center in Washington, D. C., 1930-1941

During the 1930s the neighborhood shopping center emerged as an important phenomenon in the development of retail facilities in the United States. Prior to that decade, the type was limited to a modest number of examples built as components of planned residential subdivisions for the well-to-do. By the eve of World War II, the neighborhood shopping center was seen as an advantageous means of meeting the routine needs of people in outlying urban areas generally. During the 1930s, the neighborhood center also became one of the first common building forms to experience a basic reconfiguration to accommodate patterns of widespread automobile usage. Washington, D. C., was the initial and by far the most intensive proving ground for this work at its formative stage. The results were influential nationwide in the shopping center9s transformation from a novelty to a ubiquitous feature of the American landscape.

The Parts and Their Whole Conceptualizing a Planning Strategy for Restoration at Thomas Jefferson’s Academical Village

The traditional core of the University of Virginia campus, created by Thomas Jefferson in the early nineteenth century, affords an instructive case study in how restoration of its physical fabric can continue to be a viable treatment, lending new insight on its designer’s intent, while also allowing changes to the complex that have been made over time to remain and enhance its overall historical richness. This both-and planning strategy emphasizes the overarching importance of Jefferson’s scheme, but avoids the constraints of a museum piece or, worse, the lapsing into a themed cliché. The lessons learned with this project carry important implications of the treatment of historic districts that possess transcendent core physical attributes, yet also have other, minor qualities that contribute to the significance of the whole by virtue of their differences.

City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950.

Winner of the Lewis Mumford Prize for Best Book Published in American City & Regional Planning History 1995-1997From the 1920s to the 1950s, Los Angeles did for the shopping center what New York and Chicago had done for the skyscraper. In a single generation, the American retail center shifted from the downtown core to the regional shopping center. This rise of the regional shopping center is one of the most significant changes to the American city in the twentieth century, and no other American city has done as much as Los Angeles to spur that change.Ten years in the making, City Center to Regional Mall is a sweeping yet detailed account of the development of the regional shopping center. Richard Longstreth takes an historical perspective, relating retail development to broader architectural, urban, and cultural issues. His story is far from linear; the topics he covers include the emergence of Hollywood as a downtown in miniature, experiments with the shopping center as an amenity of planned residential developments, the branch department store as a landmark of decentralization, the evolution of off-street parking facilities, and the obscure origins of the pedestrian mall as a spine for retail complexes.Longstreth takes seriously the task of looking at retail buildings--one of the most neglected yet common building types--and the economics of real estate in the American city. He shows that Los Angeles in the period covered was a harbinger of American metropolitan trends during the second half of this century. Over 250 illustrations, culled from a wide variety of sources, constitute one of the best collections of old LA photographs published anywhere.