The Modern Interior

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processing of administrative tasks, which were, of course, no less important
to local and national economies. Office work was seen as being ripe
for potential rational reorganization as a means of increasing efficiency.
By the late nineteenth century the office helped men and women to
engage in a relationship with the modern world, less (as in the public
context of consumption) through the creation of theatrical fantasies or
idealized modern interiors than through a forced proximity to new
machines which transformed the nature of work in that particular environment.
Going out to work was men’s primary means of entering the
public sphere. They encountered there a set of newly rationalized work
practices and standardized routines that rapidly became part of modern
living and that determined the nature of the interior spaces they occupied.
It took some time, though, for the appearance of the office to
overtly reflect the fact that it had become an important site of masculine
modernity. In the middle years of the nineteenth century it was still a
dark dingy place with high wooden desks that allowed individuals a high
level of privacy, stools and dark panelled walls. 28 Lights, adjusted by
weight and pulley systems (like those used in factories) were introduced
as soon as electricity became available, replacing the candles and gas
lights that had preceded them. Visitors to an office usually encountered
a wooden counter serviced by an office boy. Office work could even be
undertaken in railway carriages, either with the assistance of a small writing
desk suspended from the luggage rack above or within an appropriately
modified carriage which came complete with a lady typist. 29
The expansion of commercial activity in the latter half of the nineteenth
century brought with it the formation of large companies demanding
more expansive spaces. In addition the introduction of typewriters
and adding machines created the need for departmentalization in the
office. As a result small, mixed purpose offices gave way to regimented
typing pools and accounts sections. As in Ford’s Highland Park factory,
management increasingly distinguished itself by inhabiting offices that,
complete with family photos, ornate furniture, patterned wallpaper and
decorative objects arranged on the mantelpiece, resembled the gentleman’s
study in the middle-class home. Indeed the distinction between
areas designated for middle-class occupation in a number of public spaces
– including those in trains and ocean liners – and those destined for the
working classes was frequently made through the contrast of comfortable
domesticated spaces with more utilitarian and regimented interiors, the
latter emphasizing the uniformity of the masses and characterized by an