Creating the steel chapel: A study of commercial office furniture design in the United States from 1876 to 1925

The successful evolution of business in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was made possible in large part by the development of systems—organizational structures which directed the flow of work and delineated the roles of workers and equipment in the factory and the business office. Improved productivity and increased efficiency were the goals of every system. An important component for the effective implementation of new business practices as part of office systems was the office furniture—the “tools” which enabled office workers to complete their assigned tasks within the context of overall office production.;This dissertation will examine the history of design and style of office furniture between 1876 and 1925, in light of the changing office practices. While little has been written on this subject, examining it can tell us much about how systems of office developed, how that work was carried out and the effect which it had on the actions of office workers. It will address the issue of how office furniture achieved a high level of standardization in form, design and finish throughout the industry in the first quarter of the twentieth century—an anomalous condition in a competitive, free-market economy—as American business practices became standardized, and examine how this standardization was promoted not only by the manufacturers but also by the theorists in office management practices.;This study proposes that furniture design was a vital component of business practices which was directly influenced by the developing organizational systems and which conversely influenced them in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The design of office furniture could not be viewed simply as a static result of the changing conditions in the business office, but was part of a dynamic process with implications for the manufacturers, business owners and managers, and the office workers. This study shows that the design of office furniture was an evolutionary process which paralleled the development of systems in business organizations from the indexing systems in the 1860s to the standardization of business practices and the design of office furniture in the early 1920s.