| This dissertation examines the emergence of the reinforced-concrete factory building, a vastly popular structure of great austerity and uniformity that helped to transform the American urban landscape after 1900. It explores the technological, social, and aesthetic agendas of the concrete experts and builders responsible for the building's proliferation. All of these agendas supported an ongoing role for technical expertise in standardized, large-scale construction. The spread of reinforced-concrete factory buildings represents a systematic importation of scientific knowledge into a commercial production context, and this thesis recounts the occupations and cultural visions established and displaced by this modern architectural form.; Chapter One contains a historiographic overview of literature on technology and architecture and a brief history of reinforced concrete prior to 1900. Chapters Two and Three follow the work of early twentieth-century materials scientists as they established university departments for concrete research, taught succeeding generations of experts in the field, and adapted their knowledge for application in the daily routines of concrete construction. Chapter Four describes the adoption of reinforced-concrete technologies by factory building firms and their integration of concrete into hierarchical structures of occupational authority and opportunity on the construction site. Chapter Five recounts the understanding that factory builders held of the modern functionalist aesthetic, associating their views with those of forward-looking architects and critics of the day. It also places this new architectural sensibility in the broader context of a culture ready and willing to celebrate in its architecture the accomplishments of technology and commerce. Chapter Six provides conclusions and a summary of the dissertation. |
