Taking as its focus the apparently lowly storefronts of Main Street, Gabrielle Esperdy's book offers an engaging reading of these quotidian and commercial architectural elements, arguing convincingly that they “have much to tell us about American culture in the Depression decade when urbanism, consumerism, and modernism all converged on Main Street and thousands of storefronts embodied vital concerns of the day” (3). What Esperdy, an architectural scholar, offers her readers is a synthetic study which brings together the social, political, economic, and architectural dimensions of storefronts.

Esperdy argues that the characteristic storefronts of the 1930s registered the disruptive impact of the Depression, through, for example, the obvious need for repair after years of missed routine maintenance, or, most arrestingly, by being boarded up and abandoned as merchants went out of business. Created by the National Housing Act of 1934, the Federal Housing Administration offered government backing for private building modernization loans through the Modernization Credit Plan (MCP), and the modernization of commercial property qualified for the scheme. Along with many second-wave New Deal policies, this programme was focussed on recovery rather than relief: building modernization would stimulate the building activity that would put money back into circulation and put people back to work, and, in particular, the modernized store would encourage the shopping activity that would put even more money back into circulation, especially from those newly employed. However, Esperdy contends that Main Street had psychological as well as economic importance for the American people and, through the quick transformation of modernization, the characteristic storefront came to represent “a material and rhetorical staging of recovery and progress” (10).

In order to address the complex psychological weight carried by the Main Street storefront, Esperdy turns to historical and sociological examinations of the spaces and practices of consumerism and considers how marketing and advertising, in particular, shaped the modernization programme. By drawing on building and architectural periodicals, the text connects commercial architecture to consumer culture, reflecting on how contemporary concerns around issues of obsolescence, gender and fashion influenced commercial architecture as represented by the storefront. This area is the most engaging as it unites critical questions around the architectural façade (seen in international modernism) with the human face and cosmetic and beauty culture. Esperdy goes even further, in her final chapter, to then link storefront modernizations to twentieth-century changes in social relations, including the importance placed on external appearance which she aligns with changes which saw the culture of personality superseded by the culture of character.

Charting the complex relationship between the individual and the community, and between design and commerce, this well-illustrated study balances contextual discussions with case studies and close readings to offer a coherent and enlightening consideration of the spaces of consumerism. By placing the interrelatedness of social and economic change at the heart of the study, Esperdy's work strikes a particularly resonant note for contemporary readers. As the American economy experiences a new downtown and popular rhetoric is once more consumed with debates over the relative powers of “Wall Street vs Main Street,” the reader is left to ponder what the legacy on the built environment will be seventy years after the story of the Depression and the hope of recovery was writ large on storefronts across the nation.