Journal Article

Architect as developer and the post-war U.S. apartment, 1945-1960

Lasner, Matthew Gordon

2014

Overview

The often neglected subject of the architect-developers and architect-developer firms who worked in post-war mass-market homebuilding is considered. The methods and motivations of three of these are discussed within a larger context of 20C housing production: Vernon DeMars (an architect-developer whose big break came when he was asked to design Easter Hill Village in Northern California during the 1950s), Brown and Guenther (a firm primarily concerned with welfare housing within New York City), and Erwin Gerber (an architect-developer who collaborated on many projects around the northern New Jersey area). Real estate development is also employed as a lens through which to explore the wider subject of the US built environment in the two decades following the end of World War Two. Argues that many architect-developers saw their work as an extension of their professional commitment to educate the public on good design and that by harnessing the welfare state towards this, and many other aims, they generated their own opportunities to move beyond the incremental give-and-take of patron and client to initiate and direct production.