Building up rather than out made the most efficient use of heat rising from the first floor to also warm the second (and possibly third). [W]hat was lost in the massive building boom was not quality. Initially these homes were built to house people working in war-related industry. Bombing during World War Two was estimated to have destroyed 500,000 homes and many were left badly damaged, especially in cities like Coventry and London. The Cape Cod was just not enough house for many post-war homebuyers. He taught the world how to mass-produce high-quality, affordable houses (see sidebar), and built more of them than anyone else in history but never owned a house himself, and hated the suburbs. Like it or not, William J. Levitt forever changed our world. Lives that had been on hold since the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 were resumed. Houses were more costly because they were getting larger and more luxurious: 40% bigger by 1965 with central air conditioning, better insulation, more appliances, improved design, and extensive landscaping. The Great Depression of the 1930s depressed, among other things, home building. Levitt kitchens were decked out in enameled steel cabinets with Formica's amazing new laminated countertops — hygienic and durable. After the war, it was turned into an American officer mess hall. And I laid down right on it. Life was different in the suburbs. The te… Used as foundry after 1825, damaged by fire in 1879 and demolished in 1887. He is one of Time Magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century, in good company with the likes of Franklin Roosevelt and Robert Goddard of NASA fame. Rolls House built 1718 by Colen Campbell. VA inspectors were wartime veterans themselves and on a mission. Decent housing of any kind was hard to find. The Colonial had become a "left-over" style. Any one-story, three-bedroom house with a low roof is probably going to be identified, rightly or wrongly, as a Ranch. How did the Labour Government deal with the problems of the time? Known as the “Addison Act” after the Minister of Health Dr Christopher Addison, it signified the beginning of state-owned housing or council houses as they are known today. Prefabs (prefabricated houses) were a major part of the delivery plan to address the United Kingdom's post–Second World War housing shortage. Excerpted from: "One Carpenter's Life", Fine Homebuilding #177, March 2006). LEVITT & SONS AND THE POST WWII HOUSING BOOM. Every 60 feet they stop in front of a just-cured 800 square foot slab of concrete, pausing just long enough to drop identical bundles of lumber, pipes, siding, bricks, shingles, tile and wiring, then moving on to the next slab. His were designed specifically for South­ern California living and greatly influenced by low-roofed Spanish-adobe ranch and farmhouses on which thick walls, broad overhanging eaves, and tile roofs were intended to keep the house cool in blistering desert summers. It took a great effort and time to rebuild these lost monuments after the war , so that their story and heritage may be preserved for future generations . The house I grew up in cost $16,000 in 1959. It was a traditional colonial-era architectural style: boxy, low to the ground with a sharply pitched roof and narrow eaves. Every house had to pass a detailed inspection. Altogether 156,000 prefabs were assembled using innovative materials such as steel and aluminiumand proved a successful and popular house … There had been little new building for two decades. Young couples with infants were living above garages, in spare rooms, in tiny apartments with their parents. Of particular note was California-based builder Joseph Eichler, who's ranch houses brought a fresh, modernist approach to the ranch-style, elevating it to something of a period icon, much admired and widely copied. House building slowed to a virtual standstill between 1939 and 1945. Hundreds of thousands of them.". [ T]he demand for new houses was so enormous that it required revolutionary thinking about how to build them. The end of the Second World War brought a sea change to American housing that In just 20 short years altered the entire American landscape, creating whole new towns and cities where none had existed before, and inventing an entirely new suburban lifestyle. Millions of families who never even dreamed of home-ownership suddenly found themselves in the market for a new house.