Published by Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Princeton Architectural Press Publication Data 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 Quonset : metal living for a modern age / Julie Decker and Chris Chiei, For a free catalog of books, call editors. 1.800.722.6657. p. cm. Visit our web site at www.papress.com. “The Anchorage Museum of History and Art in association with the Anchorage © 2005 Princeton Architectural Press Museum Association and the Alaska Design All rights reserved Forum”—CIP t.p. Printed and bound in China Includes bibliographical references and 09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1 First edition index. ISBN 1-56898-519-3 (hardcover : alk. No part of this book may be used or repro- paper) duced in any manner without written per- 1. Quonset . 2. Buildings, mission from the publisher, except in the Prefabricated. 3. Architectural context of reviews. metal-work. 4. Temporary housing. 5. Dwellings—Alaska—History—20th Every reasonable attempt has been made century. I. Decker, Julie. II. Chiei, Chris. to identify owners of copyright. Errors or III. Anchorage Museum of History and Art. omissions will be corrected in subsequent IV. Anchorage Museum Association. V. editions. Alaska Design Forum. NA8480.Q66 2005 Publication of this book is supported by the 720'.48—dc22 Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Anchorage Museum Association, the Alaska 2004024738 Design Forum, and their grantors, sponsors, and volunteers.

Editing: Linda Lee Design: Deb Wood

Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Dorothy Ball, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Megan Carey, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Jan Haux, Clare Jacobson, John King, Mark Lamster, Nancy Eklund Later, Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson, Jane Sheinman, Scott Tennent, Jennifer Thompson, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Quonset Hut

Metal Living for a Modern Age

Julie Decker and Chris Chiei, editors

The Anchorage Museum of History and Art in association with the Anchorage Museum Association and the Alaska Design Forum, Alaska

Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Preface Julie Decker x Acknowledgments xii

Introduction The Hut That Shaped a Nation Julie Decker and Chris Chiei xv

Chapter 1 How the Hut Came to Be Chris Chiei 1

Chapter 2 Quonsets, Alaska, and World War II Steven Haycox 31

Chapter 3 War, Design, and Weapons of Mass Construction Brian Carter 47

Chapter 4 After the War: Quonset Huts and Their Integration into Daily American Life Tom Vanderbilt 63

Chapter 5 The Huts That Wouldn’t Go Away: Alaska Adopts the Hut Chris Chiei 105

Chapter 6 Quonsets Today: Concluding Thoughts Julie Decker and Chris Chiei 133

Appendix: Hut Types 148 Notes 150 Image Credits 156 Index 161 Contributors 165 Preface Julie Decker

Quonset Hut: Metal Living for a Modern Age is a project that began half a decade ago when architect Chris Chiei took note of the presence of Quonset huts throughout Alaska—more than half a century after the huts were sent around the world as temporary shelters for World-War-II soldiers, forming a major part of the infra- structure of war. Until now, the impact of Quonset huts in post–World War II life has not been documented in a comprehensive way. Quonset huts are referenced in a variety of publications, and everyone seems to be able to conjure up an image of a semicircle when they hear the word “Quonset,” but its story has not yet been told. While the subject of Quonset huts can be serious––wartime and postwar housing shortages are not lighthearted topics––it is also one that can claim a certain levity. Quonset huts have entered into many love-hate relationships with their dwellers who both embraced and resisted the simple geometry of the form. Quonset huts have staked their claim on the built environment throughout the world––and the unbuilt world in the case of such remote places as Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the South Pacific. Just as Alaskans claim duct tape and bunny boots as their own, they also claim the Quonset hut, since Alaskans, throughout their relatively short his- tory, have recognized the temporary and durable nature of the hut, tolerated its industrial nature, and chuckled at their unexpected permanence––a proud, though aging, part of the everyday land- scape. Mention Quonset huts to almost any Alaskan you run into and they will have a personal story about living in, working in, or just seeing one. Although not entirely an endangered species of

x Julie Decker Alaska’s, or other far-flung places’, built environment, the number of existing Quonset huts has dwindled to the point that most chil- dren and newcomers to these strategic World War II places are completely unaware of the dense Quonset camps that once stood at the center of their own communities. Contributing writers to this publication look at the Quonset hut in a variety of ways, from its inception in World War II, its pivotal position during the war, its brief attempt to solve the postwar housing shortage, and its role as an inspiration for leading postwar architects. Quonset is a project of the Alaska Design Forum, a nonprofit organization of architects, artists, and designers formed to broaden the range of discussion about the design of the built environment. Quonset will also be a traveling exhibition organized by the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, which will open in Anchorage in October 2005. The goal of the project is to recognize the Quonset hut as an important invention to come out of World War II and to identify the inventiveness it inspired in those who occupied them or lived near them during and after the war. The Quonset hut has long been tolerated, at times ignored. This project aims to give the Quonset hut a pat on its rounded back for being the best building it could be. If nothing else, it was persistent. Quonset was born out of the work of numerous volunteers. Without their generous donation of time and energy, this project could not have been realized. They, too, should be recognized for their persistence.

xi Preface Acknowledgments

This project would not have been possible Photographers without a number of individuals, businesses Clark James Mishler, David Gellotte, Patrick and organizations. Thank you to the following: J. Endres, Kevin G. Smith, Bruce Binder

Publication Research Sponsors The Staff at the following Archives National Endowment for the Arts Anchorage Museum of History and Art National Endowment for the Humanities (Dianne Brenner, Mina Jacobs, Walter Van Alaska Humanities Forum Horn), National Archives—Pacific Alaska Alaska Association for Historic Preservation Region, University of Alaska Anchorage American Institute of Architects, Alaska Consortium Library, Z. J. Loussac Public Chapter Library (Bruce Merrell), University of Alaska Koonce Pfeffer Bettis Architects Fairbanks Elmer E. Rasmuson Library (Rose The Graham Foundation Speranza), Alaska Film Archives at Elmer E. Anchorage Historic Properties Rasmuson Library (Dirk Tordoff), Alaska State Anchorage Museum of History and Art Archives (Larry Hibpshman), Alaska State Alaska Design Forum Museum, Alaska State Library, Tongass Historical Museum, Kodiak Historical Society Research and Project Development (Marian Johnson), National Archives II, Volunteers (Sandy Smith), National Archives I, The Ron Bateman, Catherine Williams, Julie Library of Congress, The Ben Moreell Library Decker, Chris Chiei, John Pearce, Clark (Deborah Gunia), Navy Art Collection (Gale Yerrington, Leone Chiei, Lewis Santoro, Munro), U.S. Army Center of Military History Charles Mobley, Seth Brandenberger, Robert (Renee Klish), Yukon Archives, National Brandenberger, Bruce Merrell, Sharon Archives of Canada, Canadian War Museum Ferguson, John Biggs, Erica White, Amy (Maggie Arbour-Doucette), National Gallery Tomson, Leslie Marsh, Isobel Roy, Laura of Canada, The Art Institute of Chicago (Kate Winckler, Patty Peirsol, Buck Walsky, Chris Butterly, Lori Boyer, Mary Woolever), Rhode Cole, Jesse Flores, Ric Martinez, Duke Island Historical Society (Rick Sattler, Dana Russell, David Mollett, Karen Larsen, Matt Signe K. Munroe), Phillips Memorial Library, Johnson, Amber Ridington, Howard Brown, The History Factory (Alexandra Brisen), Petra Sattler-Smith, John Weir, David Quonset Point Seabee Museum (Jack Hayden, Evelyn Rousso, David Porter, Susan Sprengel), Masonite Corporation (Pasty Elliott, Mary Richards, Don Decker, Michelle Myric), Butler Manufacturing Co. (Andrea Decker, Michael Morris, Joe Senungetuk, Hanson) Don Mohr, Sheila Wyne, Wendy Ernst Croskrey, Mike Croskrey, KN Goodrich, Don Special Thanks to: Henry, Ted Herlinger, Carol Crump Bryner, Barnes Architecture, Alaska Private Lodging, Chris Arend, Marie Ringwald, Elaine Charles Bettisworth & Co., McCool, Carlson Williamson, Kristofer Gills Green, Architects, The Center for Visual Art of Alaska, Mayer Sattler-Smith, Northern Project Consultants Land Use Research Trevor Boddy, Donald Albrecht, Mike Dunning, Steve Haycox

xii

Introduction The Hut That Shaped a Nation xv

Julie Decker and Chris Chiei

Portable architecture was the first fully man- family, one of them measuring more than a made and inhabited form of architecture. hundred feet in length and containing ten Over millions of years, it has evolved and has small hearths in a row. also often been rejected in favor of perma- The basic hut then remained virtually nent buildings. Today architecture and unchanged for a million years. In the 1600s permanence are treated as synonyms. The huts were still used all around the world. The Great Pyramids of Giza are listed as one of sheepherders of the Sahara Desert built new the Seven Wonders; medieval cathedrals are every time their animals moved to a celebrated in art history books. These struc- new place. Native Americans in the seven- tures are admired because they are grand, teenth and eighteenth centuries were and because of their longevity. experts at building structures from readily The first forms of architecture available materials that provided sophisti- responded to temporality and, often, portabil- cated, and sometimes moveable, . ity, serving the mobility of nomadic peoples. Some nomadic Native Americans who inhab- Man’s earliest ancestors sought protection ited the Great Plains lived in portable cone- from the elements and predators in natural shaped structures called , from ti, which shelters such as caves and rock overhangs. means “dwelling,” and pi, meaning “used Gradually, they learned to improve their for,” in the Sioux language. The dwellings caves with inlaid stone floors, walls at the were built by stretching tanned buffalo hides entrances, and fireplaces. But man was a around a frame, which was made of long, hunter-gatherer and needed to follow his vertical poles that leaned inward and joined food. So man invented the hut—a small, at the top. When the buffalo migrated, the humble dwelling of simple construction with tribes, following their food source, took down a simple roof. Evidence of a wooden hut was the tipis; domesticated dogs dragged the found at Terra Amata near Nice in France, poles and the skin coverings to the next loca- dating back to the Mindel Glaciation tion—not an easy task. between 450,000 and 380,000 BCE. The hut The Iroquois tribes in central New included a hearth and fireplace and was York state, along the St. Lawrence River and made by bracing upright branches within a the northern shore of Lake Ontario in the circle of large and small stones. Multiple- sixteenth century and beyond, called them- family huts from the Stone Age (ca. 10,000 selves Haudenosaunee (“People building a Bomber pilots receiving BCE) have also been discovered. Two huts at longhouse”). Several families lived in a long- instruction from Col. W. O. the Kostienki site near Alexandrova in the house with separate family units connected Eareckson, Umnak Island, Ukraine accommodated the entire extended by a continuous passageway. Over time, AK, August 20, 1942 longhouses could be extended as needed, In the 1860s the Hudson Bay with new family sections added at each end. Company built a chain of retail stores in Some excavations of former Iroquoian town British Columbia and Alaska to serve miners sites have revealed longhouses measuring as during the Gold Rush. In doing so, they long as four hundred feet. Longhouses were invented a building form. The Hudson Bay built of saplings—large ones served as posts, Company building was a log structure called flexible ones formed the rounded roof. the Red-river Frame, which adopted the log From the end of the last Ice Age to the cabin design that, rather than post-on-sill early nineteenth century, when lumber and construction, used logs with dove-tail cor- metal were favored for most structures, the ners that ran the full length of the wall. The best-known temporary house type of the walls were generally twelve to fifteen rounds Arctic region was the , derived from the high, which, combined with a steep-pitch Inuit word igdlu meaning “house,” a winter roof, allowed for a spacious attic, often used house built of the area’s most common mate- for the storage of furs and as sleeping quar- rial: snow. Snow is packed and cut into ters for the clerk. These buildings were blocks for stacking in rows in an upward designed to be erected in remote places. spiral. The spiral slopes inward toward the In 1851, British engineers produced top and is capped by a single block. Entry is a building called the Crystal Palace, which through a short tunnel made of snow blocks was designed around prefabricated and with a rounded roof. demountable modules. The Crystal Palace Of all the native dwellings of North structure was relocated from the site of the America, wooden plank houses of the north- 1851 Great Exhibition in central London to west coast most closely resembled Western Sydenham in Kent, where it was located architecture, combining aesthetic considera- until its destruction by fire in 1936. Designed tions in addition to functional ones. Built in by gardener Joseph Paxton, the Crystal the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of Palace has been called “proto-modern archi- long boards of cedar, the plank houses had a tecture” and was widely imitated in Europe rectangular shape with a sloping roof and and the U.S. Though not unanimously cele- faced the sea or river. The direction of the brated in its own time—it was nicknamed facade was a typological requirement for the the “glass monster”—it made pioneering use dwellers because they wanted to face the of cast-iron structure, prefabricated units, water, which was a source of life—providing and an antecedent glass curtain wall. It food and other basic needs—for them. But covered nineteen acres of ground and was even plank houses were temporary, used only erected in just nine months, a feat that from fall to spring. In summer, when commu- would have been unthinkable just a decade nities moved into the forests for fishing and before. Even after one hundred and fifty berry gathering, people removed the planks years, this achievement has not been dupli- and carried them inland to make temporary cated. Britain also innovated a smaller-scale shelters there. portable building in the nineteenth century. xvi Julie Decker and Chris Chiei The Manning Portable Colonial Cottage was are mobile homes, Americans have always the first example of a mass-market, demount- wanted to see these types of structures, like able building. It was prefabricated, modular, the Quonset hut, as temporary fixes until relatively easy to ship, and easy to erect. something better came along. To keep them These buildings were transported all over would mean failure. After all, you can paint a Britain and into North America, and were picket fence on the side of a Quonset hut, but also converted into prefabricated churches, it still looks like a pop can lying on its side. hospitals, banks, and other facilities. North Today, however, it appears there might America didn’t keep the Cottages for long— be a revival of appreciation for portable the model was abandoned in favor of designs architecture. A wide range of forms and sizes developed and sold via the Sears mail-order are being used in mobile buildings. There are catalog, such as the Rudolph house plans structures that can seat ten thousand people (1930–32). and be erected and dismantled in days. Then came the Quonset hut, a key There are tiny structures that celebrate player in the chronology of portable, design at the same time that they celebrate demountable architecture. The Quonset hut simplicity and mobility. Although relatively is not unlike its predecessors: for example, few industry-produced portable buildings it resembled a longhouse, except that have been designed for a dedicated user Quonsets were metal-clad. But the Quonset with specific needs in mind, and fewer make hut was not considered architecture. They use of design precedents (like the Quonset were created to service the military and the hut), recent advances in materials technolo- war effort. Particularly after the stress of war, gy and construction techniques have refash- Americans wanted permanence and distance ioned and repopularized portable architec- from reminders of the war. They wanted ture. And with the demand for lower-cost some guarantees. Sure, a Quonset hut pro- alternatives to escalating housing prices in vided needed shelter, but few people named the U.S., many contemporary architects have it as their first choice for housing. The responded favorably to this trend. Quonset hut and its postwar cohort the The Quonset hut is the portable build- mobile were economic solutions. They ing that has dominated the twentieth centu- were less than the Dream. ry in the U.S. It may even be said that the While the world’s remaining nomadic Quonset hut is making a comeback, albeit societies still live in portable structures— with a facelift. As leading designers today Bedouin , Mongolian (which only have increasingly incorporated new, low- take an hour to erect or dismantle), Tuareg tech, prefabricated, and portable structures mat huts, and Cambodian “houseboats”— into their architectural vocabulary, it is not Americans do not embrace the concept. preposterous to suggest that, if invented Motor homes, perhaps, but only if one can today, the Quonset hut would be given a return to bricks and mortar after the drive. degree of seriousness, respect, and perma- While a quarter of all new homes in the U.S. nence absent during its initial appearance. xvii The Hut That Shaped a Nation