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In a new study, historian Willa Granger, Ph.D., explores how a little-known Illinois company, the Americana Corporation, helped shape the modern nursing home in postwar America. During the 1960s, Americana developed a replicable model of suburban, hospital-adjacent facilities that blended real estate, institutional medicine and franchising – transforming eldercare into a standardized, corporate system tied to federal policy and funding.

Granger’s research reveals how architecture was central to this shift, not just housing older adults but creating an entire system of care. By examining the physical and institutional design of Americana’s homes, she uncovers how midcentury ideals around aging, medicine and profit became embedded in the built environment – a legacy that continues to define long-term care today.

“This is not just a story about nursing homes. It is a story about how buildings mediate care, how federal policy influences physical space, and how the structure of eldercare became a mirror of midcentury American life – its promises, its anxieties and its enduring contradictions,” said Granger, assistant professor, School of Architecture, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters.

Read the press release.