Confess this: when you bought your new house you searched for inspiration in a magazine or more, of the sector. You searched for some creative inspirations; interior and exterior of a house are important thematic.
It's more common than what we can think to search for an inspiration and magazines are ones of the most powerful sources where to find answers in this sense.
Sure a magazine that made the difference, with its powerful editor Elizabeth Gordon from 1941 to 1964 was House Beautiful specialized in middle-class houses.
The book I am reviewing, Tastemaker Elizabeth Gordon, House Beautiful and the Postwar American Home by Monika Penick is an interesting, researched book about the biggest past "influencer" of middle-class homes; Elizabeth Gordon.
Born in Indiana in a Methodist family pretty observant, this girl experienced some problems when she went to the university, because of the religious rigidity of her family. Elizabeth later decided to attend the University of Chicago, modern, progressive and no one this time will stop her to become a leader of the communication with the time: a great reporter in particular of magazines treating homes and architecture at first. The big occasion?
In 1941 she became the editor in chief of House Beautiful, a magazine born at the end of 1800s for giving advice to the families regarding homes; tips, suggestions. War changes everything and Gordon one of the few women editors in the USA, was in grade to create a beautiful reality although in time of war; the magazine obtained a great success and a new debate starting to emerges while war was was still going on: what kind of house would have known the post-war?
Predicting a good postwar prosperity, Gordon tried all her best for defining various profiles, starting from the working class house for arriving at the upper middle class house; thinking that the owners of these houses would have been young families.
House Beautiful from 1943 "became a reliable planning guide," as writes the author, "where her readers learnt how dreams could be dreamt and realities could be built."
An important voice of Gordon's magazine became the "Home Planners Study Course" where she offered in 14 pages the so-called "Livability" and what it means, with important voices like "Money Matters."
The course started to become an educational course for learning more than some bits about architectural style.
What Gordon wanted to avoid, was the arrival of people, also pretty erudite from outside telling to Americans how to build homes.
Proud to be American, Gordon thought that this one was a story that needed to be sorted out by Americans and their personal desires.
Not only: Elizabeth Gordon thought also that: "Architecture is like Religion. There are many faiths...The architectural faith that you adopt is, in a way a symbol of your life." Adding also: "Your House is a Statement of Your Life."
The PostWar House was fresh,comfortable; a new modernism was thought and surpassed, and Gordon wanted to encourage Americans to design, build and live in modern houses.
Thanks also to her personal suggestions.
The house of the last second post war had to conceived with a New Look: she asked to American of changing their "National Mental Attitudes", for discovering a new emerging cultural desire for self-expression.
Gordon launched these powerful messages to her readers using an inclusive language: she used words like "we" and ours."
House Beautiful penetrated slowly slowly in the social tissue of Americans, influencing their choices.
From 1947, Gordon started to treat Climate problems, and later she would have launched House Beautiful's Climate Control Project.
Gordon has been editor of House Beautiful till 1964. The magazine grew from 226,304 to just under one million in 1964.
Beautiful book, if you love history of architecture, if you search for some inspiration or, if you want to discover more closely who made the modern house in the USA.
I thank Yale University Press for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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