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

Richard Longstreth is one of the few historians to focus on ordinary commercialbuildings--buildings usually associated with commercial builders and real estate developers ratherthan architects and thus generally overlooked by historians of "high" architecture.Here Longstrethexplores the early development of two kinds of retail space that have become ubiquitous in theUnited States in the second half of the twentieth century. One, external, is devoted to thecirculation and parking of automobiles on retail premises. Longstreth analyzes the origins of thisdevelopment in the 1910s and 1920s, with the super service station and then the drive-in market. Theother type of space, internal, was introduced soon thereafter with the single-story supermarket. Themost innovative aspect of the supermarket was how its interior was designed for high-volume turnoverof 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 themid-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 urbanlandscape.