The Drive-In, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941

by Richard W. Longstreth

Longstreth explores the early development of two kinds of retail space that have become ubiquitous in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Richard Longstreth is one of the few historians to focus on ordinary commercial buildings—buildings usually associated with commercial builders and real estate developers rather than architects and thus generally overlooked by historians of "high" architecture. Here Longstreth explores the early development of two kinds of retail space that have become ubiquitous in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. One, external, is devoted to the circulation and parking of automobiles on retail premises. Longstreth analyzes the origins of this development in the 1910s and 1920s, with the super service station and then the drive-in market. The other type of space, internal, was introduced soon thereafter with the single-story supermarket. The most innovative aspect of the supermarket was how its interior was designed for high-volume turnover of a large selection of goods with a minimum of staff assistance. Longstreth focuses on Los Angeles, the principal center for the development of both kinds of space, during the period from the mid-1910s to the early 1940s. This richly illustrated study integrates architectural, cultural, economic, and urban factors to describe the evolution of retailing and how it has affected the urban landscape.

Genres: Architecture

267 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1999

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I was curious about the earliest urban forms that catered specifically to the automobile. This book delivered on that particularly in the first couple of chapters. As I worked through the book I became invested in the evolution of general retail stores changes and how each iteration brought us closer to the supermarkets and strip malls/shopping centers we see today.

While I can imagine the book not being the most captivating I ended up greatly appreciating the research and niche storytelling that went on, and I've become interested in Longstreth's other work, City Center to Regional Mall , which seems to be the more popular one.

Overall quick read, great photographic accompaniments, well researched, recommend reading through the lens of the broader changes to urban form and how we lived our lives that the automobile catalyzed.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this sibling text to his prize-winning City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (1997), Richard Longstreth traces the transformation of shopping spaces and processes in Los Angeles during the period 1914-1941. Although he states his aim as an effort to precisely identify the variety of factors that shape and cause a particular social change, his argument revolves around the automobile and how it greatly expanded shoppers’ movement through space and ushered in changes to both the exterior and interior of retail establishments.

In successive chapters, he sketches a retail lineage linked by automobility. He begins with the drive-in businesses of the 1910s, such as the filling station and subsequent super service center, which accommodated automobiles in new spatial arrangements. He argues that these spaces begot the drive-in market of the 1920s, which introduced the concept of one-stop shopping and off-street parking, conveniences that shoppers readily embraced. He then demonstrates how the supermarket of the 1930s was the first retail business to effectively combined a host of novel retailing characteristics (low prices, self-service, large volume sales dependent upon the car for transport, the selling of a variety of goods, non-urban settings, large buildings and floor spaces, ample parking lots, bright and clean interiors) under one roof. He argues that supermarkets thus ushered in a new age of retail, embodied by business ventures like the “lateral space” (180) of the neighborhood shopping center, which Longstreth discusses in his final chapter, which ponders the fate of Main Street and its traditional shopping.

Through these three spaces, and the 165 images of them throughout the text, Longstreth traces the transition in shopping processes and the physical environments in which it occurs from pedestrian-friendly, multi-storied, downtown stores to automobile-oriented, sprawling single story, self-service operations sited farther from the city center. With exterior spaces that prioritized copious parking over street appeal and interior spaces reconfigured to promote efficiency and profit, Longstreth argues that the supermarket led to the homogenization of all retail experiences and environments, in everything from drug stores to appliance stores, pet stores to bookstores. He argues that these changes in the retail landscape contributed to the decline of urban spaces, the prioritization of car-centric lifestyles dependent upon copious parking, and a demise of community sentiment.

Just as some bemoan consumption as a soulless preoccupation of modern life, Longstreth seems to mourn the loss of dense urban cores and the shopping patterns and community cohesion that they provided. At the same time, he acknowledges that today’s shopping centers, “low-density, sprawling affairs whose buildings are visually dwarfed by the open spaces – the parking lots, circulation paths, and arterial routes – that serve them” achieve and exceed Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for “this new scale of lateral space, indoors and out” (180). In this way, Longstreth acknowledges that shopping centers, those “new loci of commerce” (xv), have accomplished nothing less than a dramatic revolution in shopping practices and retail landscapes over the span of only a handful of decades.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief but informative and cogently argued look at how the rise of the automobile shaped commercial spaces in southern California (and through it, the rest of the country) in the early twentieth century. Longstreth focuses on super service stations (and gas stations), drive-in markets, supermarkets, and strip malls (although he doesn't use that term). The burgeoning middle-class and auto-dependent, sprawling urban design in LA--as well as various related forces in real estate and retail--fueled a shift away from the Main Street paradigm that had previously dominated commerce in cities and towns. "Commercial space," as used in the title, could be seen as including both the place of commerce within the city and the design of the place of commerce itself. The automobile and the mass merchandising innovations that accompanied it transformed both. The large number of photos in the book help to illuminate the transformation being described and make reading an all the more pleasurable experience. My only criticism is that the book would have benefited from a timeline of sorts that could show how the various developments were happening in relation to each other.