Compositional Types in American Commercial Architecture

Richard Longstreth

Architecture Degree—University of PaPh.d. in Architectural History—UC Berkeley

Richard Longstreth. East Providence, Rhode Island. Providence: Rhode Island Historical Preservation Commission, 1976.

Richard Longstreth, ed. A Matter of Taste: Willis Polk's writings on Architecture in the Wave. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1979.

Richard W. Longstreth. "The Problem with 'Style.'" The Forum: Bulletin of the Committee on Preservation, Society of Architectural Historians 6, Nos. 1/2 (December, 1984).

Richard Longstreth. "J. C. Nichols, the Country Club Plaza, and Notions of Modernity." Harvard Architecture Review 5 (1986): 121-135.

Richard Longstreth. "Compositional Types in American Commercial Architecture" Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, II. Camille Wells, ed. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press for the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 1986. Pp. 12-23.

Richard Longstreth. The Buildings of Main Street: A Guide to American Commercial Architecture. Building Watchers Series. Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1987.

Richard Longstreth. "When the Present Becomes the Past." Past Meets Future: Saving America's Historic Environments. Antoinette Lee, ed. Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1992. Pp. 13-225, 249-253.

Richard Longstreth. "Don't Get Out: The Automobile's Impact on Five Building Types in Los Angeles, 1921-1941." ARRIS [Journal of the Southeast Chapter, Society of Architectural Historians] 7 (1996): 32-56.

Richard Longstreth. "The Mixed Blessings of Success: The Hecht Company and Department Store Branch Development after World War II." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, VI. Carter L. Hudgins and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, eds. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Pp. 244-262.

Richard Longstreth. City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.

Richard Longstreth. The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Longstreth, Richard. "The Extraordinary Post-War Suburb." Forum Journal 15, No.1 (Fall 2000): 16-25.

Longstreth, Richard. "Modern Dilemma: ‘I Don’t Understand It, It Doesn’t Look Old to Me.’" Common Ground 8, No. 2 (Summer 2003): 10-15.

Longstreth, Richard. "The Unusual Transformation of Downtown Washington in the Early Twentieth Century." Washington History 13 (Fall/Winter 2001-02): 30-71.

Longstreth, Richard. "The Last Landscape." In Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture II: Making Postwar Landscapes Visible, Charles A. Birmbaum ed., with Jane Brown Gillette and Nancy Slade. Washington, DC: Spacemaker Press, 2004: 118-125.

Longstreth, Richard. "Sears, Roebuck and the Remaking of the Department Store, 1924-42." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 65, no. 2 (June 2006): 238-79.

What is the news?

• Commercial architecture is just beginning to be understood.– Tall buildings are most often studied– Studied for formal details, or structural systems

• Rarely studied in broader terms– Functionally

• Recent studies of roadside architecture as representational, but not commercial architecture.

What did he do research?

• National Trust Main Street Program• Provide means of classification

– Salient qualities (what does he mean?)– Not pseudo-stylistic features.

• Critique of style.– It has lost its meaning in myriad details– Needs a more holistic approach

The typology

• Requirements– Simple– Nationally applicable

• Classification as a basis for further research– Based upon the work of Fred Kniffen

What’s not important

• Massing may, or may not be important in classification. (Why?)

• Floor plans are irrelevant. (Why?)– Multi-functional

• Commercial buildings are different than domestic buildings. (Why?)

• Absence of regional differences. – Competition between communities resulted in

conformity

What compositional type?

What’s important

• Facade.– Does not just contain elements, it is designed.– Decorated wall planes.

• Exceptions are corner lots.• Variations in the details of store-fronts

save the cast-iron front buildings.• Conform to a few compositional

arrangements

Typology and mental template

• Typology is a researcher abstraction and does not reflect how owners or designers thought about buildings.

• Changes in 1950s to composition of buildings.– Modernist approach. Little use for

composition.– Suburban development and importance of

automobile.