Jayne Merkel: When Less Was More
[Jayne Merkel is an architectural historian and critic. She is the author, most recently, of “Eero Saarinen.” She is a contributing editor of Architectural Design/AD magazine and Architectural Record.]
We tend to think of the decades immediately following World War II as a time of exuberance and growth, with soldiers returning home by the millions, going off to college on the G.I. Bill and lining up at the marriage bureaus.
But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less truly could be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish.
As we find ourselves in an era of diminishing resources, could “less” become “more” again? If so, the mid-20th-century building boom might provide some inspiration....
The popularity of simpler living made it possible for one American developer, William Levitt, to realize the prewar dream of the European modern architects to use industrialization for housing. During the war, Levitt had become an expert in mass-producing homes for shipyard workers in Virginia. When it ended, Levitt and his sons created a prototype 750-square-foot, one-floor house—with a living room, kitchen/dining area, two small bedrooms, a bathroom and an unfinished “expansion attic”—to fit on a 60 x 100 foot lot. Set on concrete slabs like those at the shipyards, the new houses were built quickly and cheaply on a sort of assembly line, with pre-cut lumber and nails shipped from the Levitts’ factories in California.
Eventually, the Levitts built 140,000 houses, clustered in Levittowns on Long Island and near Philadelphia for some of the 16 million returning veterans. In the 1950s, the houses grew slightly, to 800 square feet, and came equipped with carports and built-in 12.5-inch Admiral TVs. Clearly no one considered multiple televisions, or that they would be frequently replaced....
Read entire article at NYT
We tend to think of the decades immediately following World War II as a time of exuberance and growth, with soldiers returning home by the millions, going off to college on the G.I. Bill and lining up at the marriage bureaus.
But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less truly could be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish.
As we find ourselves in an era of diminishing resources, could “less” become “more” again? If so, the mid-20th-century building boom might provide some inspiration....
The popularity of simpler living made it possible for one American developer, William Levitt, to realize the prewar dream of the European modern architects to use industrialization for housing. During the war, Levitt had become an expert in mass-producing homes for shipyard workers in Virginia. When it ended, Levitt and his sons created a prototype 750-square-foot, one-floor house—with a living room, kitchen/dining area, two small bedrooms, a bathroom and an unfinished “expansion attic”—to fit on a 60 x 100 foot lot. Set on concrete slabs like those at the shipyards, the new houses were built quickly and cheaply on a sort of assembly line, with pre-cut lumber and nails shipped from the Levitts’ factories in California.
Eventually, the Levitts built 140,000 houses, clustered in Levittowns on Long Island and near Philadelphia for some of the 16 million returning veterans. In the 1950s, the houses grew slightly, to 800 square feet, and came equipped with carports and built-in 12.5-inch Admiral TVs. Clearly no one considered multiple televisions, or that they would be frequently replaced....