The Modern Interior

64
for a lot of legwork. It doesn’t need wealth, but it does take thought, some
ingenuity and resourcefulness, and more than a little loving care to create
a home that is really your own.’ 19
Displays of furniture ensembles and of complete interiors were not
only visible inside the bodies of stores, they were also installed in shop
windows which could be viewed from the street. By the early twentieth
century the three-walled interior frame had become a familiar sight in
department store windows. It had its origins in the theatrical stage set
and the domestic dramas of the decades around the turn of the century.
A 1925 American manual for ‘mercantile display’ advised that ‘the installing
of a design of this character is well worth the effort as it lends itself to the
display of a varied line of merchandise’. 20 The same manual also included
a display of living-room furniture, explaining that, ‘The furniture is
arranged in a manner to show [it] off to good advantage, using the
necessary accessories such as the lamp, book rack, pictures etc.’, reinforcing
the, probably tacit, knowledge of professionals in that field that
consumers needed to be shown just enough of an interior for their
imaginations to be stimulated and their desires evoked. 21 The neo-classical
simplicity of one model shop window interior in the manual, intended
for a display of furniture, provided a fairly neutral backcloth (p. 63).
Draped curtains added a level of theatricality, a chequered floor a suggestion
of Viennese modernity, and a fringed standard lamp a counterpoint
to its otherwise strict symmetry.
While department stores provided an urban means of consuming
the interior, the shopping mall became its suburban equivalent. With the
advent of the automobile in the us, demand grew for out-of-town shopping
places where there was plenty of parking space. 22 Thus the shopping
mall, a collection of individual shops brought together into a single unit,
was born. In 1916 the Chicago architect Arthur Aldis created one of the
first shopping complexes of that kind, Market Square in Lake Forest,
a wealthy suburb of Chicago. He integrated twenty-eight stores, twelve
office units, thirty apartments, a gymnasium and a clubhouse, and added
landscaping around them. His aim was to position everything in one place
so that the consumer could combine shopping with leisure activities.
Through the twentieth century the idea of the suburban mall gradually
displaced that of the urban department store. Targeting a range of social
classes, it offered consumers a very different interior experience, one which
was usually less consistent, less spectacular, less luxurious, less glamorous
and more utilitarian. By the end of the century shopping malls had taken