Even though 500,000 prefab homes were built for World War II, builders were not committed to the prefabrication approach. But why not? These homes should have served as an entré to the future use of components by the hundreds of builders who constructed government housing in hundreds of communities. But the results of a 1943 survey showed that less than one-quarter of builders planned to use shop-fabricated parts after the war. Many believed that wartime housing was of poor quality, regardless of the actual quality of any trusses used in them. There was opposition to ongoing governmental involvement in housing after the war, which builders felt was usurping their opportunities. And finally, those who built these half-million homes had to fabricate trusses under challenging jobsite conditions, which also discouraged the continuation of these practices. [For all images, See PDF or View in Full Issue.]
Many of prefab’s quality issues arose from the type of housing that was constructed, which was designated to be temporary or demountable, intended to be disassembled after the war. While most of these housing units were fully componentized, the parts were mostly fabricated onsite, in all types of weather, at an extremely demanding pace. The panels were bolted together, and the trusses were set 4’ on-center, which deviated from standard framing practices and implied substandard quality. Few of the amenities associated with permanent structures were provided, further diminishing the overall quality. Thus, traditional builders generalized from that experience and cast dispersions toward all prefabrication. One survey of 40,000 dwellings being built in Los Angeles in 1946 found that “an overwhelming percentage were conventional in type and were being built by the same builders who had been erecting homes there before the war. Some of the prefab outfits, who turned out shoddy houses a year or so ago, are finding the going tough now that the conventional builders are underway.” Traditional builders’ animosity was surely compounded by the fact that their resistance to the use of components during the war years had severely restricted their opportunities during that time. Thus, this resistance plus the stigma of “poor quality” continued to taint prefabrication long into the future.
The government’s apparent preference for this “shoddy” type of housing even after the War also frustrated homebuilders. In an effort to alleviate the severe shortage of housing, President Truman signed legislation to expedite housing construction. However, a bureaucrat named Wilson Wyatt determined that up to 850,000 prefabricated units needed to be built by 1947. This caused a huge outcry by the National Association of Homebuilders and its local homebuilder affiliates, who already faced material shortages and were slowly recovering after the war years.
The experience also tainted the use of trusses specifically, mainly due to the complexity of their connections and the cost of their fabrication. On longer spans or when they were designed for higher loads, trusses were made of heavy, overlapping timbers that were attached using split-ring connectors. Joining the members was a daunting task, requiring routing and drilling matching surfaces at each overlap to receive the connector, and then installing bolts with 3” washers on the outer surfaces of members. Builders who had to deal with snow loads and/or restrictive urban building codes would naturally hesitate to use heavy, split-ring connected trusses, especially because most lacked powered lifting equipment onsite.
Despite the perceived disadvantages, some builders continued to pursue prefabrication and components while overcoming the challenges they presented. In particular, the Levitt family had learned the hard way how to use components. Although they had studied the use of prefabrication and built several componentized houses before the war, they were slow to start using them when they began building a 750-unit wartime housing project in Norfolk, Virginia. After falling behind, they began assembling components onsite, including split-ring trusses. That helped them develop the production-line approach that they followed in constructing the first two Levittowns (even though they decided not to use trusses in these). The Levitts set up a pseudo-assembly line in a shop onsite at both projects, where they plumb-cut rafters and butt-cut ceiling joists, as did many post-war homebuilders on large sites. When the Levitts were well into their third large project in south New Jersey, they surely influenced Lenny Sylk’s decision to enter the component business, leading to the lasting legacy of his Shelter Systems’ businesses.
Besides traditional builders, another large contingent helped overcome the stigma of components – the group led by James Price and his brother George. Building modest midwestern-style ranch houses before the war, they recognized the potential of prefabrication, telegraphing their ambitions by naming their company National Homes in 1940 and opening a prefab factory in Lafayette, Indiana. They made a bold bet at the start of the war, offering to supply up to 750 units per month for wartime housing, resulting in their successful supply of a total of 7500 units. While Price suggested that most of these homes were nothing but “glorified chicken coops,” they enabled his company to standardize parts, master pre-assembly, and perfect packaging and shipping, beginning the next phase of homebuilding technology – prefabrication.
Several developments in the sunbelt spurred the use of trusses more quickly there than by their counterparts in the north, because plywood gussets and bolts could be used instead of split-ring connectors. Such was the case in the Wynnewood Village project in Dallas in 1946, named after the Wynne family. Using plywood-gusseted and bolted connections, the Wynnes set up a shop onsite to precut truss parts and assembled them on ground-level wood tables, ultimately fabricating tens of thousands of mostly 30’-2” trusses for the 12,000 units they built by 1959. These types of repetitive housing projects in Dallas surely inspired a local lumber yard proprietor, Charlie Barns, to become one of the first truss fabricators in the country, ultimately leading to Dick Rotto’s storied success with Trussway.
Thus, prefabrication retained a presence in the homebuilding industry. Slowly but surely, it was proving its advantages. Although faced with many detractors and many challenges, prefab was evolving into a more acceptable practice, and that would accelerate over the 1950s and 1960s.
Next Month:
Prefab Hits Its Stride
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