Christopher Innes is Canada Research Chair in Performance & Culture at York University, Toronto.
"Original and innovative. I know of no other book that brings Urban
and Bel Geddes together to demonstrate the specificity of their
unique and quite astonishing accomplishments, their influence and
impact on so many aspects of American life."—Don B. Wilmeth, Asa
Messer Professor Emeritus, Brown University, and editor, Cambridge
Guide to American Theatre
*Don B. Wilmeth*
"Innes shows the unsuspected extent to which a magical theatrical
world of a thousand colors and million shapes—each of which had a
special job to do in somebody's idea of the ensemble—has become the
world in which we live every day."—Joseph Roach, Charles C. and
Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of Theater, Yale University
*Joseph Roach*
"Even aficionados of modern American design will be astonished by
the prodigious talents and ambitions of Joseph Urban and Norman Bel
Geddes, as chronicled by author Christopher Innes in Designing
Modern America: Broadway to Main Street. This fascinating account
traces the connections between Urban's and Bel Geddes's theatrical
productions on Broadway and their iconic consumer products that
defined the look of 'The American Century' for much of the
western world. This story of their less-known efforts to create a
holistic modernism that encompassed the entire environment, from
model kitchens to model cities, with fashion, cars, movies,
household furnishings, world's fairs, low-cost housing, and
factories in between, represents a significant contribution to our
understanding of these two pioneer industrial designers and their
role in the history of American design."—Natalie Shivers,
co-author, L.A.'s Early Moderns: Art/Architecture/Photography
*Natalie Shivers*
“To trace the genesis and influence of Urban and Bel Geddes on
American culture is to see the evolution of twentieth-century
American design and its influence on the world. Innes’s book is a
revelation.”—Thomas F. Staley, University of Texas at
Austin
*Thomas F. Staley*
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