ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the twentieth-century house and home and, in particular, the American single-family house and its suburban settings, as cultural artifacts that reveal and are also disclosed by the predominant cultural values and beliefs of their time. Suburban houses and their settings are, of course, found worldwide, but they have played the most potent cultural and ontological roles in Anglo-American contexts. The American suburban house reflected many of the ideals of its English contemporaries, but found unique expressions in a culture that oscillated between class distinctions and egalitarian self-determination. An ontological function of the suburban house, especially its early iterations, was to situate self and society. It is clear there are many congruent and conflicting cultural assignations regarding suburban domesticity. The variety of positions of promulgators and critics comprises a broad reception history of the promises and contradictions of the suburban house.
