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This article examines the emergence of “modernization”—the remodeling of existing buildings—as a significant part of architectural practice in the United States in the 1930s. It shows how the Great Depression spurred interest in modernization among architects and building material manufacturers. It reveals how architects reconsidered the scale, scope, and substance of professional practice. It investigates how manufacturers developed products and construction methods specifically for modernization, and it analyzes their strategies for promoting these products to architects and architectural clients. The article argues that modernization embodied a nexus of social, economic, and technological factors that transformed the interaction of architects, manufacturers, and clients, as well as the buildings they produced. It further contends that this transformation had important consequences, bringing about a reevaluation of the nature and definition of architecture and a questioning of the relationship between architecture and the marketplace—issues that are still being debated today.

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