1916 Prefab Bungalows

From a showroom in Gustav Stickley's New York Craftsman Building and its Dover, Massachusetts factory and exhibit space, the E.F. Hodgson Company advertised its prefabricated cottage and bungalow homes, garages and poultry pens. Distributing its stock via second class freight trains, the company claimed that all of its products could easily be assembled by a couple of ' handy men' within two days, and just as easily disassembled for relocation. The homes arrived pre-painted, with French gray walls, ivory sashes and leaf green roofs and trimmings. Frames of Oregon pine and red cedar were secured to foundation posts of cedar, chestnut or locust with strap irons. As part of an international recovery effort, the National Red Cross Association of Washington, D.C. sent Hodgson portable homes to Italy via the naval supply ship Eva after the devastating 1908 Messina earthquake.

In 1912 New Orleans, D.H. Holmes sold portable houses developed by the R.L. Kenyon Company of Waukesha, Wisconsin. These were prefabricated with Washington fir frames, Georgia pine floors, burlap ceilings and partitions, steel chimneys and windows comprised of a dubious-sounding "fiberloid."(1)

(1)"How Would You Like to Live in a Portable House?" The Daily Picayune (30 April 1912): p. 10 [Advertisement].

Images above: Hodgson Portable Houses. Boston:  E.F. Hodgson Company, 1916. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

$50 House 1945

I was recently at the Midwestern Region Friends of Dard Hunter Conference at the Paper Discovery Center in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Discovery Center's permanent exhibition references a paper house designed for emergency shelter (fires, flooding, or other disasters) by the Institute of Paper Chemistry. With the exception of plastic windows and metal hardware, the house (shown above) was built entirely of recycled paper products.

The structure was erected in less than one hour by two men, using chipboard that was made from waste paper (newspapers, etcetera). A fortifying agent strengthened the chipboard against water and humidity, and the house was coated with a fireproof paint. The 8 x 16' structure was intended to safely house a family of four.

Paper houses were not completely new. In 1924, a Massachusetts mechanical engineer named Elis F. Senman designed a timber-framed paper house and its furnishings. It remains a popular tourist attraction. Read more here.

Read more: "Paper House Costs $50." Popular Science (March 1945): p. 85 available from Free E-Journals. [Image above from article]

Homeward Bound/-17º F

As the windchill factor has dipped to -17º F in my hometown today, I am reminded that I am heading home. My grandma turns 89 years old this month, and we are planning a long drive across the Midwest to the northern plains, roughly thirteen hours from Oshkosh, Wisconsin to Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Grand Forks sits at the juncture of two rivers, one flowing north (Red River), one flowing south (Red Lake River). In the spring of 1997, the Red River was slowly melting as it coursed northwards. It remained frozen north of Grand Forks. The city and surrounding areas were inundated with water, and the communities of Grand Forks, North Dakota and East Grand Forks, Minnesota, were evacuated by the National Guard. Since the Red River Valley was once the bottom of a vast glacial lake, the flood spread over a hundred miles.... Oslo, Minnesota, became an island. Reluctantly, my grandma drove in the early morning hours to her hometown of Edmore, roughly ninety miles west. [The windchill is -29º F there today].

After Grand Forks evacuated, an electrical fire spread through the historic downtown. Firefighters could not get their trucks through the high waters (image above).

Twelve years after the flood and fire, the city has never looked better. New dikes, new biking/walking paths, expanded public greenspaces, a thriving arts community downtown. My Art Deco junior high school, originally slated for demolition after the flood, was adapted for reuse as a senior citizens' apartment building. My grandma took me through the building as the crews were working on Mr. Sinclair's former mathematics classroom, changing it into a small apartment with enormous south-facing windows. The Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] proclaimed this project a successful use of 'preservation as part of the recovery effort, to assure the residents of a community that their memories and values will continue to thrive as the community rebuilds.'

See: C.A. Bigenwald and Randall White, "Heritage Preservation and Disaster Management: United States and Canada," Options Politiques (April 2003): pp. 36-40. Available at: www.irpp.org/po/archive/apr03/bigenwald.pdf