Art deco flourished in cities and small towns throughout America during the 1920s and 1930s. Extremelypopular as o statement of modernity and technologicalprogress, art deco movie palaces, dime stores, department stores, courthouses, and schools were ubiquitous in the American landscape. Many of the bestexamples of the style continue to be used today asimportant civic and social spaces.

American art deco was unique. Unlike their European counterparts, architects in the United States had"exotic" indigenous cultures for inspiration. Arts such asNavajo chiefs' blankets, Hopi pottery, and Sioux beadwork, characterized by geometric ornament, wereeasily assimilated into the art deco style. Regionalism--on example of which is the Prairie style, advocated byFrank Lloyd Wright and other progressive architects--also influenced American art deco. America's pioneering and westward migration provided powerfulthemes and motifs, producing on art deco style withauthentic national and regional characteristics.

Two themes bound deco buildings and their decorative schemes together: regional pride, and a growing national symbolism that asserted the buildings' identity as uniquely, independently American. By 1928 artdeco skyscrapers, warehouses, manufacturing lofts.apartments, and hotels were being built in oil regions of the US, and the ground was broken for many more.Slobs and towers, attenuoted pyramids, and innovotive pinnacles began to transform many cities into what immigrants hod imagined the New World to besymbols of oil that was modern, of the achievements of science, technology, and freedom.

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDCMENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE NORTHEAST

THE SOUTH

THE MIDWEST AND PRAIRIES

THE  SOUTHWEST

CALIFORNIA  AND

THE  PACIFIC  NORTHWEST

NOTES

BIB IOCRAPHY

INDEX