Space and Culture

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Company Towns : Between Economic Dominance and Mass Media-A Review of

Rassenga 70 (1998)
Dion Kooijman
Space and Culture 2000 3: 244
DOI: 10.1177/120633120000300405
The online version of this article can be found at:
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Company Towns:
Between Economic Dominance and Mass MediaA Review of Rassenga 70 (1998)

Dion

Kooijman

Company Towns, a special issue of the magazine Rassegna, gives an overview of the history of
the company town from the beginning of the nineteenth century till recent days. Examples in
Europe, USA and elsewhere are described and analysed. One will find more or less known company towns like Le Creusot in France, Crespi dAdda (Italy), Essen (Germany), Pullman Town
(Chicago) from the period before the second world war, and from the last decades: Metanopolis
(Italy), Hamamatsu (Japan), and Silicon Valley (USA). These two different episodes are demarcated by an analysis from John S. Garner and another from the editor ofthis issue: Frederico Bucci.
Where Garner is assessing the beginning and the end of the industrial territory of the company
town in the nineteenth century, Bucci is trying to describe the continuity in the development of
company towns.
According to Gamers short definition, a company town is a single-enterprise business vencomposed of a work place and housing (1998: 30). The first generation can be characterised
by their need for transportation, the harnessing of water power and steam engines and the domination of the works or factories. What matters is how the two spheres - work and housing - are
brought together in the company town. Architectural models are more or less independent of the
economic domination of the company town. One will fmd grids with multilevel housing blocks or
romantic lay-outs with single family houses or cottages. It is impossible to correlate a specific
design concept with a specific historical period. At the same time one can conclude that the existence of amenities like housing, schools, shops and churches were the necessary conditions of the
economic growth the company towns produced. An economic growth expressed only by relative
high wages was not enough.
ture

The Pullman strike in 1894 signalled the end of the company town in the USA because of the
hostility of the labour unions to, what Garner terms, such outward expressions of corporate paternalism (1998: 35). Besides this element of liberation what latter developments always seem to

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245

bring, most of the authors are unclear in defining economic and political aspects or in separating
production and consumption. In her book about the design of the American company towns,
Crawford convincingly statea that the dominance of governmental policies comes with the decay
of the company town (1995). And of course the recognition of labour unions are part of this new
constellation. Mass consumption grows only under the condition of uniform political practices,
even

when you consider the

automobile, like Crawford, as another kind of liberation.

Rassegna is a magazine exploring the boundaries between architecture and surrounding or

embedded social spheres. In themes like the London underground, electricity, architectural competitions, architecture and advertising the reader can easily discover the will to be not just architecture. One has to have this in mind when a nineteenth century company town like Le Creusot or
Pullman Town are compared with twentieth century Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley represents the
fmal stage of industrial territorial concentration: the future of this area has already started in the
virtual world, writes Paola Giaconia (1998: 63). And Frederico Bucci is claiming that architecture is the new protagonist of company territories, because there is a need for recognisable identity
(1998: 68). In respect to the domestication of the work environment there is a direct connection
between the emphasis of the individual home in the last century and the use of arcades and atria in
recent buildings, but considering the social context, the company town in the former period grows
under economical dominance where the business architecture of the latter is becoming part of the
mass media and eroded political institutions (see Duffy 1997). The question then is not whether a
specific architecture is the right or even virtual representation, but under what recent particularised
conditions it is in or can be represented as.
Delft University of Technology; OTB Research Institute
The Netherlands

<Company TOBBT1S, 1998, number 70 of Rassegna, Quarterly, 1997flI, ISBN 88-85322-28-X I ISSN 039310203 (Basel,
S%itserland:Birkhatiser).
Other useful sources on this subject:
Crawfbrd, M. 1996. Building the Workingsman s Paradise, the design ofthe American Company Towns. London/New
York :Verso .

Devillers, C. and B. Hue. 1981. Le Creusot. Naissance et diveloppement dune ville industrielle 1782-1914. Seyssel:
Champ Vallon.

Duffy, F. 1997. The NeW Office. London: Conrad Octopus.

Frei, J.-P 1986. La ville industrielle et ses urbanitis. La distinction ouvrierslemploys Le Creusot 1870-1930. Lige:
Pierre Mardaga; Gamer, J.S. 1984. The model company town: urban design through private enterprise in
Nineteenth-Centrrry New England, Amherst; Gamer, J.S. ed.. 1992. The company town, Architecture and society in
the early industrial Age. New York.

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