SHELTER January 1939
A Correlating Medium For Housing Progress
Maxwell Levinson [Editor]
Maxwell Levinson [Editor]: SHELTER [A Correlating Medium For Housing Progress]. New York: Shelter Research, Volume 3, Number 6, January 1939. Slim quarto. Printed stapled wrappers. 40 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Esther Born cover photograph of a Mexico Apartment House terrace by Enrique De La Mora and José Creixell. Wrapper slightly rubbed and worn, aand edgewear to the upper rear panel, but a very good copy.
9 x 12 vintage magazine with 40 pages devoted to dream and lie of Public Housing before World War II. Assistant Editor: Nancy Gantt; Contributing Editors: Simon Breines, Frederick Kiesler, and Richard J. Nuetra [sic].
Contents:
- Arthur Bohnen’s Challenge [Editorial] byJosephine Gomon
- The Next Five Years in Housing by Helen Alfred
- The Case of the FSA by Carl Feiss
- The Progress of World Housing by Sydney Maslen
- Modern Architecture in Mexico—Photos by Esther Born of work by Carlos Contreras, Antonio Muñoz Garcia, José Villagran Garcia, and others. Author and Photographer Esther Born spent months in Mexico photographing the contemporary native functional architecture. Her architecture training, combined with her good eye, led to exceptional building photography, and her singular vision was fully realized in her book THE NEW ARCHITECTURE OF MEXICO [New York: William Morrow & Co. for The Architectural Record, 1937].
- Greenbelt Twosn by Major John O. Walker. Includes four photographs credited to Russell Lee, FSA.
- The Month in Housing by Frederick T. Payne
- A Challenge to Professional Housers by Arthur Bohnen
- New York City Housing Progress Exhibit by Nancy Gantt
- Books Reviews, icludes a full-page review of BAUHAUS 1919 – 1928 [Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and Ise Gropius: New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1938] by Gladys Delmas.
- Letters
- Recent Writing on Housing
Wikipedia defines "Shelter magazine" as a publishing trade term used to indicate a segment of the U.S. magazine market, designating a periodical publication with an editorial focus on interior design, architecture, home furnishings, and often gardening. Among Design aficionados the term is frequently used in the pejorative sense. How times have changed.
Back in 1932, a progressive group of architects formed an umbrella group called Shelter Research devoted to "achieving an adequate public housing program for the American people." Shelter Research then proceeded to intermittingly publish their magazine 'Shelter [A Correlating Medium For Housing Progress]' over the next seven years.
The publishers boldly claimed "Shelter is the only publication in America solely devoted to modern architecture, the development of industrial housing and an adequate public housing program." They further stated that "Shelter does not concern itself with out-of-date issues, but only with those ideas which seek to fully utilize the products of technological advance."
Contributing Editors included Catherine Bauer, Maxwell Fry, Walter Gropius, P. Morton Shand, L. Moholy-Nagy and Frank Lloyd Wright. Each issue presented the newest progressive ideas in public and private dwelling, via exceptional [and uncredited] graphic design and typography.
"Shelter" clearly presented the Public Works Administration's agenda in both form and content. I don't think we will ever see its type again.
Esther Born studied architecture at the University of California under the distinguished teacher, John Galen Howard. Disgusted with the amateur photographs she took during a trip to Europe, Esther Born studied photography as preparation for specialization and as an aid to her future architectural work. Her husband Ernest Born is well known both in San Francisco and New York as a brilliant designer, and has been associated with The Architectural Record and other publications in designing architecture, typographical layouts and editorial work.”