#Mid Century USA

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

FILE UNDER "PORCHSIDE MOMENTS IN TIME FROM MID-CENTURY AMERICA."

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a photo titled "Kathy Bauer’s porch," Chicago, USA, c. 1966. 📸: Danny Lyon, from "The Bikeriders" photo book by D.L., first published in 1968. Photos courtesy of Edwin Hook Gallery & Magnum Photos.

Source: www.a-rabbitsfoot.com/editorial/confessions/danny-lyon-rebels.

[almostarts]

Maxwell Yellen, Lounge chair, Belarus / USA, c. 1950,

Walnut, Enameled Steel, Webbing,

28½ h × 24½ w × 28 d in (72 × 62 × 71 cm)

[thesaurushouseofdesign]

David & Gladys Wright House,

Phoenix’s Arcadia neighborhood, Arizona, United States,

Built between 1950 and 1952, the circular concrete-block house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright designed the house, which he originally called "How to Live in the Southwest," for his son, David, and daughter-in-law, Gladys, as a place where they could spend the rest of their lives admiring the Camelback Mountain vista.

[germanpostwarmodern]

Perriere House (1948) in Malibu, CA, USA, by Griswold Raetze. Photo by Julius Shulman.

[acocktailmoment]

Zeppelin Art Deco Cocktail Shaker !

Chrome-plated, three-piece form, features central section as a strainer. Sits atop a wheel form base.

Circa: Early-Mid 20th Century, USA,

Dimensions: H: 4.5" L: 13"

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Green Checked Taffeta Dress, Mid 19th Century, American.

MFA Boston.

[ofsunhillow]

the online person phenomenon reading constantly of united states social issues until you feel they're the whole world's issues is insane because like. they had segregation

[midwesternartlovertraveler]

Petroleum Building, Casper, Wyoming

[fieldpractice]

[cryblo]

St Louis Siding

Example of a large, modern, two-story mixed-siding home with a shed roof and a variety of roof materials.

[almostarts]

Curtis Jeré, "Raindrops" Mirror, USA, 1969,

Steel, 7 d × 31½ dia in (18 × 80 cm)

Courtesy: Ragoarts

[facexclaimxcafe]

Midcentury Dining Room - Great Room Mid-sized 1950s slate floor and brown floor great room photo with white walls, a standard fireplace and a stone fireplace

[germanpostwarmodern]

Tyler House (1953) in Los Angeles, CA, USA, by John Lautner. Photo by Julius Shulman.

[yaguniversity]

Siding Exterior St Louis Large contemporary multicolored two-story mixed siding exterior home idea with a shed roof and a mixed material roof

[tiphaineaileen]

Living Room Open Los Angeles Example of a spacious, open-concept living room from the 1950s with a gray floor, a concrete floor, white walls, a wall-mounted television, and a tile fireplace.

[headspace-hotel]

My mamaw has the book right now so I won't be able to read it for a little bit but my mom read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan which is about the Dust Bowl and it puts in perspective all the environmental books I was reading from the 1940's and 1950's and the sense of agitation and intensity in them.

Everyone is like yeah yeah the dust bowl we've all heard of it, but the Dust Bowl was apocalyptic. The USA practically eliminated the bison—we are talking thousands of square miles of land littered with bones, enormous pyramids of skulls—and committed genocide against their caretakers, and then settlers ripped up the prairie grasses (which protected meters of top soil) with plows

And what happened was, half the country became in engulfed in horrific dirt storms that turned the sky black and reduced visibility to a few feet. Even indoor environments were full of deep drifts of dirt. When it rained, it rained mud instead of water. In ENGLAND the snow was RED because of DIRT. People died from pneumonia because they were breathing the dirt into their lungs.

Even before mom started reading this book, I was reading American books about the environment from the mid 20th century, and they are animated with the zeal and terror of people who have realized that human mismanagement could make the USA literally uninhabitable. I realized, "Oh. This is right after the Dust Bowl." cause of how they talk about erosion, and I realized just how formative the Dust Bowl was in terms of environmental policy.

Reading about various wildlife species, I realized also how utterly apocalyptic the conditions of the past were for animals. Deer were almost eliminated from my state. Deer.

Why do we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act? Because just about every large bird species almost went extinct from uncontrolled commercial hunting. We almost had no swans, no cranes, no egrets, no storks. We lost the passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets, but we could have lost Basically Everything.

So many of the ill-conceived decisions to introduce species to this continent are easily explained by how apocalyptic this period of time was. Why did we think it was a good idea to introduce Kudzu? Because in the 1950's, erosion sparked a visceral apprehension of CERTAIN DOOM, and logging had made the whole southeast start washing away! Why were so many exotic antelopes introduced to Texas? Because every native large animal was almost wiped out!

From my other readings on the subject (Changes in the Land by William Cronon is a good one) devastating environmental destruction started just about as soon as Europeans started controlling the land, and I am guessing that if you examined the timeline of environmental disaster alongside the migrations west, it would support the argument that settlers started pushing west more and more rapidly because of land degradation and environmental disaster.

I wish this was commoner knowledge, getting to where we are now has been a journey. Environmental history doesn't start in 1970's.

It is not the case that things have steadily gotten worse over time and recently are becoming extremely bad, rather, different parts of the environment have become both better and worse in steps forward and backward, and many seemingly unremarkable things around us were earned by a vicious fight, which we can learn from and continue...