Vernacular WWII-era Cottages

This post is image-heavy. Apologies to those with dial-ups.
This is a visual history of an architectural style that isn't well-documented. I've never seen these kinds of houses anywhere else (but granted, I wasn't looking for them) and they are abundant throughout south Eugene. so I'm assuming they are "vernacular," or specialized local architecture from the mid-century.

The City of Eugene has a great site for residential architectural styles and "modernism" in Eugene, which I've linked to the right. Unfortunately, the website has an odd redirect command that won't let you link to the historic preservation page, so follow the links to the left of the neighborhood map for the historical/architecture stuff. The black and white images are from these pages, and the rest of the photography is mine. Also, my lack of knowledge in html and blogger's layout inflexibility makes my images/text integration a bit rough. I'm sorry about that.

The first image is my house. The next four are of the earliest form of the "WWII Cottage" type, which are a bit different from my post-war cottage but still have many of the same features. The cottages were built during and immediately after WWII (late thirties to late forties), just prior to a severe housing shortage and building boom as soldiers returned from foreign shores. Wood was still being conserved for the war effort, so these houses are characterized by very minimal detailing and no eaves. No eaves?!? In Oregon!?!? Yes, it is true. Add that one to the What Were They Thinking file. Unlike ranches, which have low-slung eaves and a horizontal stretched-out footprint, our cottages have no eaves, even over some of the doors, and are boxy in appearance.

The earliest houses of the era are very small, usually under 1000 square feet, and they have cute little circular or octagonal windows, and windows that meet in the corners of the house to create a wrap-around effect.

The turquoise house with the excellent door was built in 1938 (or so says zillow.com). Because they are so small and humble, many are used as rental properties, like the tan one with the half-hidden octagonal window. Others are in terrible disrepair. These houses were never meant for rich people; they were built for homeless soldiers and their young families at what was then the edge of town. The airport was nearby, and streetcars rumbled down the street in front of my house. It was far from posh. Things were built to last, though, so these constructions held up over the years.

EDITED TO ADD: The City historic preservation site has information about mid-century houses River Road, another area in Eugene with more agricultural roots. They provide a picture of a 1945 home that looks similar to the ones in this post, and mention that it is a late kit-house from Sterling. The model is called the "Marleen." Even though kit-houses were popular in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, they were still being manufactured as late as post-WWII. My guess is they were a very attractive option for Eugenians desperate to build new housing stock. If ALL of these WWII-era cottages are kit-houses, that would explain the lack of eaves. Because they aren't native Oregonians, they didn't understand rain.

The next set of photos are cottages that are closer to mine in age, and still in good shape.



The peach house and the blue house with the slanting lean-to carport are both of very similar construction. These houses are distinct from the WWII Cottages because they have a picture window in the living room and dining room, they are bigger but still boxier than a ranch, and they often have little porches instead of just a stoop leading to a bare front door. They generally have cedar-shake siding, and many of them have been renovated.
What makes our house different from other houses of the same vintage is that there was an early remodel. The garage was converted into a laundry room and a large back room, and a foundation was poured for a kitchen nook and ranch-style patio in the back. It was by no means a fancy project, but the original craftsman did install two large banks of built-in cupboards and drawers of knotty pine that serve most of our backend storage.

The peach house still has the attached garage, and it looks like the blue house did the same garage conversion that was done to our house. The cream house has an even uglier carport than the blue one. Ugly carports and no garages are very popular around here. It makes sense, given that anything stored in a garage won't stay dry and mildew-free, so there are better uses of space.


And of course, the renovations are varied and creative. Taking off the flattish roofs is popular, and adding a second storey when you do so is even more popular, like the folks with the green house. Adding shutters in bright colors is popular, too, for some reason.

I particularly like the grey house on the corner, because they didn't take off the roof, they just joined the original cottage with a two-car garage/apartment combo via a glass-bricked in breezeway. The construction takes up their entire lot, and the addition is almost as big as the entire cottage. They get points for creativity, though!

Finally, the last three photos show early ranches in our neighborhood. They are built alongside the cottages, usually in slightly smaller lots and with much more uniformity in lot placement. There is great variety in the design of these earliest ranches, but they are definitely ranch-like in their own way. Quite different than what came just before, eh? I'm very fond of these early ranch houses because of their windows and landscaping, and the mcm elongated style. They still retained features of earlier styles, such as the little round window in the white house, the windows pushed to the side, and the modest eaves. I guess there's room in my neighborhood for these newfangled newcomers.

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.