“A Good Way of Life,” the cover of a textile catalog, part of the “Selling the Dwelling” exhibition at the Grolier Club. Private Collection

A cover illustration for a 1940s textiles catalog pictures Mom, Dad and their preteen son gazing reverently upon their white clapboard home. In the sunbathed valley beyond, church steeples and a brick factory building rise from a sea of leafy trees. In the lower right, bold letters declare “A Good Way of Life.”

The publication bearing this striking image is one of more than 200 books, prints and objects in theGrolier Club’s captivating exhibition “Selling the Dwelling: The Books That Built America’s Houses, 1775-2000.” Appearing in a section called “The Homes We Fought For,” the image wonderfully captures a spirit of quasi-religious patriotism animating the dream of homeownership in mid-20th-century America.

Organized by Richard Cheek, an architectural photographer and visual-history editor, the show offers innumerable other examples of the housing industry’s braiding of mythic imagination and commercial calculation.

It starts with builders’ guides and pattern books from the 18th and 19th centuries that showed American carpenters the finer points of European architectural design. Progressing chronologically, you learn of the rise and fall of styles like Greek Revival, Gothic fantasy, Colonial Revival and Beaux-Arts. The 20th century brings ads and catalogs for prefabricated house-building kits sold by Sears, Roebuck and, after World War II, mass production epitomized by Levittown, N.Y. From the Postmodern era are plans for a nostalgically traditional “dream house,” designed by Gary Brewer of Robert A. M. Stern Architects, that were published by Life magazine in 1994. It’s an epic, richly rewarding intellectual journey.

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