Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023
I’m going to be potentially controversial for this forum, and say that aside from Art Deco commercial architecture, the interwar years were for the most part not great architecturally. In the UK, I’m not even a fan of early 20th century Edwardian housing. It was the Victorians that started to introduce cheap, mass-produced housing and “suburbia”. It’s the neighborhoods from before the 1870s or so that are most attractive.
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I'd agree with this, broadly speaking.
Architecturally speaking, the interwar periods were notable for two general trends. One was the continued simplification of design and removal of ornament. For residential buildings, this didn't generally yet mean anything interesting in terms of modern design, just toned down, uglier versions of styles which began a few decades earlier (bungalows, foursquares, etc). In terms of styled residential architecture, there was a movement away from more freeform styles to "revivalist" styles (Federalist Revival and "Tudor" revival in particular) which are honestly kind of hokey.
In terms of layout, interwar neighborhoods are boring proto-suburbia. In the U.S. there's actually very little difference between them and the earliest postwar suburban neighborhoods (besides the general lack of attached garages). Even streetcar suburbia is basically just the suburbs. Outside of a few of the densest cities, new-built urban neighborhoods basically stopped being built around 1900 or so.