Envisioning Zenith
Zenith is a typical mid-sized, Midwestern city. Lewis himself was very critical of the similarities between most American cities, especially when compared to the diverse—and to his lights, more culturally rich—cities of Europe. Frowning upon the interchangeable qualities of American cities he states: "it would not be possible to write a novel which would in every line be equally true to Munich and Florence." This is not true for Zenith, Babbitt’s literary home. Zenith is a fictitious city in the equally fictitious Midwestern state of “Winnemac,” adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. (Babbitt does not mention Winnemac by name, but Lewis's subsequent novel Arrowsmith elaborates on its location.) When Babbitt was published, newspapers in Cincinnati, Duluth, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis each claimed that their city was the model for Zenith. Cincinnati possessed perhaps the strongest argument for such a claim as Lewis had lived there for a time while researching the book. Lewis's own correspondence suggests, however, that Zenith is meant to be any Midwestern city with a population between about 200,000 and 300,000.
When conducting research for Babbitt, Lewis kept detailed journals, in which he drafted long biographies for each of his characters. For his title character this biography even included a detailed genealogy as well as a list of Babbitt’s college courses. The major names and families of the fictional city of Zenith are well documented in these journals, and many of them emerge again in Lewis’s later writings. The actual layout of Zenith is also imagined with careful attention to detail. Lewis hand-drew a series of eighteen different maps that made up Zenith and outlying areas, including Babbitt’s house, with all its furnishings.
As much as Babbitt is about the American businessman, it is also about American cities. Zenith's chief virtue is conformity, and its religion is “boosterism.” (Prominent boosters in Zenith include Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer; Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's department-store; Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway Business College and “instructor in Public Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law;” and T. Cholmondeley "Chum" Frink, a famous poet of dubious talent.) As a realtor, George Babbitt knew well the virtues of his home city. In a speech to the Zenith Real Estate Board he states: “It may be true that New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from these three cites, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God’s good out-o’-doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting would want to live in them.” Zenith is thus presented as more than simply prosperous; it is safe and wholesome.
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