ABSTRACT
A full accounting of the reception of modern architecture and design in the United States requires understanding the ways in which women curated it to express identities they chose for themselves out of the suite of possibilities suggested for them, most notably by the shelter press rather than the architectural profession. In particular, the approach taken by House Beautiful in the years (1922–33) that it was edited by Ethel Power reverberated long afterwards in the homes chosen and decorated by three generations of the author’s female family members. Power encouraged female consumers to draw upon the precedent of colonial New England, understood as birthplace of American democracy as well as of an understated alternative to Victorian ornament and reliance on servants. She kept her readers informed as well about the International Style, but the technology that transformed interwar kitchens, bathrooms, and heating systems was the modernism they found most appealing.
