Review: Chicagoland Dream Houses: How a Mid-century Architecture Competition Reimagined the American Home

Amid the challenges posed by the entrance of the United States into World War II, Americans sought solace by embracing hope and envisioning future peacetime prosperity, including imagining the role that architecture could play in physically shaping those ideals. The first usage of the word postwar in architectural publications during the war marked the pivotal moment when confidence in positive outcomes firmly took root. In his insightful book 194X: Architecture, Planning, and Consumer Culture on the American Home Front, Andrew Shanken deftly examines the role print media and advertising played in architecture and urban planning, both creating and reinforcing that collective spirit of optimism.¹

Siobhan Moroney seamlessly picks up the narrative where Shanken leaves off at the war’s conclusion to look specifically at postwar domestic aspirations. In Chicagoland Dream Houses, Moroney uses the Chicago Tribune–sponsored 1945 Prize Home Competition as a snapshot of the social values of...