The Mail-Order House

A New York exhibition traces the early days of pre-fab housing

by David Sokol

If any proof was necessary that architects are as prone to following trends as the average Joe, one need look no further than prefabricated housing. This construction method du jour has been suggested for everything from stylish vacation homes, to cozy replacements for FEMA trailers in the Gulf Coast region.

Prefab architects and their fans talk about the subject with the kind of enthusiasm and reverence reserved for just-hatched inventions. But newcomers to the party may be unaware that prefab construction predates contemporary architectural currents. At the New York School of Interior Design (NYSID), the exhibition “Prefabricated Homes in America: The Early 20th Century Mail-Order House” traces the trend as far back as 1912, when Sears Roebuck first offered consumers the chance to purchase house plans and all the parts necessary to build them.

Exhibition curator and NYSID professor Evie T. Joselow says that while early 20th-century prefab designs failed to corner the housing market, they did take root in the imagination of consumers. Companies including Sears, Aladdin, and Gordon-Van Tine offered middle-class Americans their first chance at homeownership—a strikingly Modern vision, too, that featured open plans, appliances, mechanical equipment, lighting fixtures, and built-in furnishings.

We chatted with Joselow about this first wave of prefab design and gained some historical context for our current obsession. “Prefabricated Homes in America” runs alongside the show “The Home House Project: The Future of Affordable Housing,” through April 21.

So, prefab housing isn’t such a new concept after all.

Actually, prefab was a part of very early American history. Houses were transported to the colonies from England. These were sectionalized buildings in which entire wall panels were shipped with the door and window frames already cut out. And at the end of the 19th century, materials for houses were often supplied already cut, but unassembled.

What prompted that industry to pop up then?

Building-supply companies had depleted the large timber around the Great Lakes, so they figured that they could use their remaining milling resources to offer house plans and cutting wood to match them. And since they were already selling stairs and moldings, they bundled these products into a menu for customizing a house. Also, you see the rise of mail-order business in the 19th century: Sears Roebuck mail-order clothing ultimately led to readymade housing.

The prefab advertisements exhibited here look quaint, but these designs were in fact quite modern.

For many people this was the first house to have the modern bathroom and kitchen included. More generally, prefabs parallel the new interest in American homeownership—this was the time when home economics was born.

So the efficiency studies associated with early home economics explains the seamless flow between rooms?

Yes, but when we walk in these places today we notice the small size of the rooms. We don’t realize just how ingenious the floor plan was.

And yet, on the outside, these houses didn’t push the envelope at all.

Consumers had no interest in concrete or glass. This is not novel taste. It’s comfortable, quaint, cozy, cute: it’s the California bungalow, or Cape, or foursquare farmhouse you see in your dreams. This was trickle-down taste. The public was not yet ready for the modern look we associate with innovative prefab today. Still, in the 1930s you start finding shiny surfaces and some pared-down houses. So the middle class was looking to Europe somewhat and demanding styles that originated there. Companies also introduced new materials like aluminum-protected lumber, asbestos, new roof materials, and paint solvents. Some of these things are just lethal, but back then they were modernity. Aladdin even compared its homes to the Woolworth Building.

How big was prefab back then? Outside of conventional manufactured housing, today’s modern stuff, as new as it is, captures just a sliver of the market.