ABSTRACT
A constellation of factors, including the activities of the outdoor advertising industry, laid the groundwork for the commercial strip of the postwar period. By the mid-1920s, central business districts of small and large cities were overrun with automobiles, congesting streets designed to handle only a fraction of the demands put on them.1 Real-estate developers and merchants recognized the growing frustration of shoppers and, with and without the benefit of extensive market and traffic studies, they went to the fringes of the central city, where land was less expensive, parking ample, and congestion not yet an issue. Businesses logically migrated toward arterial highways.
