Table Architecture, Pristine Line

A 1936 advertisement for Congoleum Rugs—featuring a smiling couple seated at their dinner table, the husband poised to carve their main dish of ham—captures the mixture of modernist efficiency and formal traditions that appeared in many popular images of Depression-era dining rooms (fig....

Cities, with their soaring buildings, transportation networks, crowds of inhabitants, and seemingly endless activity, encapsulated modern life and served as a source of inspiration for many American designers and artists. By 1920 over half of the U.S. population inhabited urban areas. As the migration from the countryside continued during the 1920s, coupled with increased foreign immigration, the size and complexity of American cities grew—office towers proliferated, the majority of inhabitants …