On 4 March 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as the 32nd president of the United States and inaugurated a New Deal for the American people. Roosevelt's administration introduced an alphabet soup of government-sponsored programmes to increase building construction. These included the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), of which only the last still exists today as the Federal Housing Administration. Gabrielle Esperdy establishes the FHA as the protagonist of her wonderful book, in which she details its role in the modernization of the American Main Street.

Esperdy begins her investigation by exploring linkages during the 1920s between the idea of the American Main Street and notions of traditional American values that were reflected in both literary sources and in the quaint eclecticism of its architecture. Traditional American storefronts quickly faded from public favour when they no longer brought in customers during the Great Depression. The solution, Esperdy successfully reveals, was to recast or ‘modernize’ Main Streets across America with progressive new designs that were intended to breed economic optimism and stimulate spending. Storeowners, however, had to be convinced that such progressive modifications were financially and physically manageable. Esperdy details the economic mechanisms made available to store owners through programmes like the Modernization Credit Plan (MCP), and points out how this credit was used on Main Street modernizations. She analyses the FHA promotional brochures for storeowners and describes in detail the new building materials – for example, Vitrolite, Insulux and Vitrolux – that promised to thrust storefronts into an economically vibrant future. Main Street modernism is equated with communities unified by façades that have been resurfaced with new materials designed in the Streamline modern style. This new style was promoted by the FHA, introduced by national chain stores, supported by industry and endorsed by such well-known American industrial designers as Walter Dorwin Teague and Norman Bel Geddes. Esperdy dives headlong into the thorny question of façadism and its relationship to gender, psychology, urbanism, science and to the International Style, which was introduced by Philip Johnson at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932.

Perhaps the most striking revelation in this book, however, is the extent to which public agencies like the Federal Housing Authority were engaged with the private banks, automobile manufacturers, chain store owners and the other businesses they were set up to help. Such a reassessment of public and private during this period by architectural historians is much needed. Esperdy's book opens a large new window on the modernized American Main Street that gives us a fantastic view of the development of American cities during the Great Depression and beyond.