In 1954, audiences were first treated to what is perhaps the ultimate Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rear Window. The film's unsettling murder mystery was certainly entertaining enough, but Hitchcock achieved more than the usual resonance with audiences, through the use of his mammoth set representing an apartment-house courtyard between West 10th and 11th Streets in New York's Greenwich Village. 1954 was a year in which American society was changing rapidly and dramatically, due to the breakdown of class distinctions and the physical dislocations that had begun during World War II. No longer did the average American necessarily live in his home town, close to family and lifetime friends; the nation's new apartment houses and suburbs threw people of disparate backgrounds and income levels into close proximity. The effects of such democratization were often salutary, but certain checks and balances inherent in American life no longer applied, creating new anxieties. Who were one's new neighbors? What did one actually know about them? And were they the sort of upstanding citizens one could wish? Hitchcock's film tapped into this postwar angst perfectly, referring to these factors and taking them one dramatic, worrying step beyond the experience of the average viewer. Hitchcock's apartments in Rear Window are emblematic of many factors common to American life in 1954, from new questions of privacy generated by smaller living spaces, to a need to individualize near-identical housing units, to the anonymity newly available to those who would live outside society's rules. The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window will attempt to demonstrate how the director used commonly encountered architectural elements and used them to manipulate his audiences into acceptance of the tale he wished to tell.

Sandy Mclendon is the author of Prefab Elements: Adding Custom Features to Your Home, Harper Collins, 2005