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This dissertation explores the changing perceptions of the American downtown in the twentieth century, from the downtown "golden age" of the pre-World War I years to the downtown renewal efforts of the 1950s and 1960s. I analyze how images and ideals have guided policy-making, commercial investment decisions, and citizens' choices. This study focuses on the frameworks used by national-level organizations to interpret the story of the downtown for the broader public. Most important among these organizations have been the federal government, chain stores, real estate and planning consultants, national business and professional associations, academic communities, and citizen groups. Changing concerns about the downtown--which groups should be there and under what circumstances--have constituted an on-going dialogue defining the nature of and limits to the democratic use of commercial public space. The analysis of how this evolving narrative has informed downtown investment contributes to scholarship in urban, political, social, and cultural history. Such a study illuminates the role of commercial life in the divided twentieth-century metropolis. During the twentieth century, the relative importance of different investing groups has changed, and specific investment tools either emerged for the first time or were catapulted into popularity by events. In the century's early decades, planning consultants, local businessmen, and city officials dominated investment practices. Surrounded by chaotic, unattractive business streets, these investors used promotional materials such as city plans and main street postcards to envision and promote a managed, unified, shopping corridor. The volatility of land values from the 1920s through the 1940s spawned new techniques to predict future values, particularly market surveys, store location analysis, and zoning. Following World War II, the supporters of urban renewal mobilized to attract white, middle-class women shoppers to the city's core. This dissertation asserts that through the eyes of downtown investors--businessmen, government officials, and their consultants--the downtown has been a managed and regulated democracy throughout the twentieth century. What appear to be "natural" places--the vital main street corridor, the shabby 1950s downtown core--have been closely regulated and promoted investment perspectives.
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