Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in Small-Town America (American Land & Life)

490 Pages·1996·5.82 MB·English

by  Richard V. Francaviglia

Main Street Revisited : Time, Space, and
title: Image Building in Small-town America
American Land and Life Series
author: Francaviglia, Richard V.
publisher: University of Iowa Press
isbn10 | asin: 0877455430
print isbn13: 9780877455431
ebook isbn13: 9781587290718
language: English
City planning--United States, City planning-
-United States--Maps, City planning--
subject
United States--Pictorial works, City and
town life--United States.
publication date: 1996
lcc: HT167.F73 1996eb
ddc: 307.76/2/0973
City planning--United States, City planning-
-United States--Maps, City planning--
subject:
United States--Pictorial works, City and
town life--United States.
Page i
Main Street Revisited
The American Land & Life Series
Edited by Wayne Franklin
Page iii
Main Street Revisited
Time, Space, and Image Building in Small-Town
America
Richard V. Francaviglia
Foreword by Wayne Franklin
University of Iowa Press
Iowa City
Page iv
University of Iowa Press,
Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 1996 by the University of Iowa Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Richard Hendel
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and
recording, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Francaviglia, Richard V.
Main street revisited: time, space, and image building in small-
town America / by Richard V. Francaviglia;
foreword by Wayne Franklin.
p. cm. (The American land and life series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87745-542-2 (cloth), ISBN 0-87745-543-0 (pbk.)
1. City planning United States.
2. City planning United States Maps.
3. City planning United States Pictorial works.
4. City and town life United States.
I. Title. II. Series.
HT167.F73 1996
307.76'2'0973 dc20 95-47773
CIP
01 00 99 98 97 96 C 5 4 3 2 1
01 00 99 98 97 P 5 4 3 2

Page v
Not houses finely roofed or the stones of
walls well-builded, . . . make the city, but men able
to use their opportunity.
Alcaeus, quoted in Aristides, Rhodian Oration
Page vii
Dedicated to
EDWARD T. PRICE
Now Professor Emeritus, University of Oregon,
who as my major professor and writer of
important landscape studies encouraged, inspired,
and nurtured my interest in townscapes at the
University of Oregon in the late 1960s
Page ix
CONTENTS
Foreword xi
by Wayne Franklin
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
Section 1 1
Time and Main Street
The Origins and Evolution of an Image
Section 2 65
Space and Main Street
Toward a Spatial and Regional Identity
Section 3 130
Image Building and Main Street
The Shaping of a Popular American Icon
Notes 193
Glossary 203
Bibliography 207
Index 217
Page xi
FOREWORD
By Wayne Franklin
Although the particular places we inhabit may seem resilient, unique,
as far from each other in character as they are in space, we all
recognize that the great majority of them repeat themes found all over
the place. Like language, the human environment in fact is built from
a few disarmingly simple elements. The variations on those elements
produce difference without destroying intelligibility.
Richard Francaviglia is an astute student of what is intelligible in our
landscape precisely because he shows how it proceeds from common
sources. In Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image Building in
Small-Town America, he undertakes to explain how one of the most
potent of American places has evolved over time and across space
while retaining much of its essential character. He describes many
actual, concrete Main Streets in the process especially those of the
Victorian town and small city but description is not what most
engages his attention. Rather, he is intrigued by the forces that caused
this dominant cultural form to emerge as the axis of so many
American settlements. At the crossroads of commerce and
transportation, civic identity and spatial range, Main Street provided
both a convenient entrepôt and a material definition of citizenship for
countless communities literally across the land. It was public space
structured by common activity or need and giving to the people's
experience a rich body of limits and metaphors. Although it owed its
origins to patterns imported from various points of departure in the
Old World, it assumed in the course of American history a peculiar
relation to the terms of our experience. Among all the public spaces
where Americans have gathered for good purpose or ill few have
become so evocative of the community itself as has Main Street.