historical exploration

Our house was built in 1947, during a post-war housing boom in Eugene, in what what then a fringe neighborhood. Our neighborhood was formerly a meadow, too soggy in the winter to sustain crops. The municipal airport, active during the war with military equipment, lay directly to the west. The neighborhood was otherwise largely left untouched until the returning veterans created a housing crisis for Eugene. Living in trailers or put up by sympathetic families, veterans needed affordable single-family houses. So, just like they're doing now in Bethel and Danebo, in the late 1940s and 50s builders put up house after house with no frills and cheap construction. This was an era of great change, and architecture was about to experience what some consider a revolution and others see as a crushing blow: the suburban ranch house. Our little house was born on the cusp of this revolution. It was never a grand dame. It was rather more like a decent-looking working-class chick at your local dive.

And yet.

Unlike the slapdash and dreary prefab houses they're building now, our house is as solid as a brick, er, cedar shake-shingled shithouse (see previous post). I consider it closest in architectural style to the WWII-era cottages, since it has no eaves (in the PNW? WHY???), minimal detailing, windows that cozy up to the corners so they almost wrap around the side of the building, one story, and a blocky floorplan. It also has elements of earlier styles, like a couple of coved arches and built-in nooks for a telephone and a ladder for the attic, a bookshelf for decorative plates in the dining room, and oak wood floors. It's also quite large for a cottage, with a bedroom wing with two larger (11 x 12) and one small (8 x 10) bedrooms. The garage was converted long ago to a laundry room and well-insulated "bonus" room, and a back patio was added that simulates ranch-style covered patios. Every piece of the house has its own foundation, and the walls are reinforced with horizontal beams about waist-high that add structural integrity. The original walls seem to be a mix of plaster-and-lath and plaster veneer over drywall. According to our electrician, for a short time after the war, the plasterers union was powerful in Eugene, and they insisted on covering the new technology, drywall, with plaster to strengthen it. Quite frankly, it worked. I don't have a single major crack in the ceiling or walls. There are a few superficial cracks near the windows, but small enough to caulk. We'll see how they hold up. (A caveat: I know there have been some repairs on the roof, so the ceilings may be drywall -- this remains to be seen.)

It's not a unique floorplan like a bungalow, however. There's a house around the corner that looks almost identical to ours (minus the renovations). I see many houses in Eugene that look similar, many in poorer neighborhoods, rundown, ill-painted, overgrown and sad. But they're holding up and have been doing so for 50 years. I like that tenacity. Because each of these houses are slightly different, unlike the ranch tracts that were put up on the same streets just a few years later, I like them much better than the ranches. I suspect that this house may be a kit house, like the Sears cottages sold on the East Coast. I haven't had a chance to research the deed and plat information yet.

An excellent place for historical information about Eugene residential neighborhoods and architecture is the city's historical preservation site. See the links list for more info.