About

Gabrielle Esperdy is an architectural historian and Associate Professor of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Her work examines the intersection of architecture, consumerism, and modernism in the urban and suburban landscape, especially in the U.S. in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is particularly interested in minor or everyday buildings and with the ways that social, economic, and political issues shape the built environment. Her first book is Modernizing Main Street (University of Chicago Press, 2008). She is currently at work on a second book, Architecture’s American Road Trip, which examines how architectural discourse absorbed the ideals and concerns of commercial sphere after World War II. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Perspecta, Architectural Design, and Design Observer, among others. Gabrielle is an Associate Editor of multi-volume series The Buildings of the United States, and the Editor of the SAH Archipedia, an online resource of the history of the built environment scheduled to go live in 2012. She is a board member of DesignInquiry and a regular contributor to the DesignInquiry Journal, and she blogs at http://www.esperdy.net She was educated at Smith College and the City University of New York.