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New Building and Investment Patterns in 1920s Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Gail Radford
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Extract

After the economy stabilized following World War I, the U.S. experienced a record level of residential construction. When considering housing in this period, scholars have usually focused on the sheer number of units built and perhaps on the fact that the rate of construction turned down several years before the whole economy soured. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which U.S. building patterns differed in the 1920s from earlier periods and what these changes can tell us about broader social trends. This article examines residential building in this period in more detail, by looking at the city of Chicago, and suggests that new patterns of housing construction may have been linked to changes in the economy as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , Spring 1992 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1992 

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