Rather than go into too much detail, I'll just highlight how it started. The story begins in 1956 an ocean away in Copenhagen, Denmark. A few Danish co-op grocery stores were converting to supermarkets and needed to train their new employees. They sought assistance in this process from the Greenbelt Consumer Services which in turn referred them to a man experienced in this area, Bob Gowell. In fact, if you aren't familiar with the GCS, you should catch Rob's tour which has just started. He goes into excellent detail about the Greenbelt Co-op. and if you become really interested, at the end you should go to his introduction and enjoy the entire tour!
Anyway, in the process of this training, one trainee suggested that Gowell sell the Danish furniture in his grocery store which he thought was a "nutty idea" at first. However, he later took the idea seriously and soon Gowell was selling "high quality, contemporary furniture at low prices ordinary people can afford" (Cooper & Mohn , they have opened 20 and closed 12 stores and have been profitable throughout the years (p. 405). So, their impact on the DC area goes back to those early relationships between Greenbelt and the "small cottage like industries" ( Cooper & Mohn , p. 405) in the early 1930's.
So far, we have discussed the history of Greenbelt and specifically about the furniture which now leads us to the most interesting part of your tour. Let's use this information to help us understand how these things have helped shape modern Suburbia.
Background On Modern Suburbia
Previous Page