Vintage Interiors

[3fingers]

One way to beat the wartime housing shortage: manufactured housing.
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It may not be much, but it beats a tarpaper shack or a cold water walkup.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Having lived in the latter, I would strongly agree.

 

[2jakes]

DIY Home Kit from 1920s.

 

[1mach1]

DIY Home Kit!
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[emoji23][emoji23]

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[Fading Fast]

One way to beat the wartime housing shortage: manufactured housing.
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This echoes the "housing" setup in the 1948 movie "An Apartment for Peggy" where returning GI William Holden and his wife initially live in a trailer - one of many parked on his college campus for "overflow" housing needs.

There are some really good scenes of them trying to make a home in its tiny space, but unfortunately, this is the only still I could find that kinda shows it:

 

[3fingers]

There was a massive POW camp and training post near here called Camp Ellis. It was shut down shortly after the war ended and many buildings were sold to be moved. The local university ended up with several barracks building that they used mostly for married student housing up into the 1960's when they built apartment buildings for that purpose. I have known a few people who lived in them. A trailer would have been a step up since they were thrown together in 1942 to last only a few years. There is still a row of them in the little town I live in used as apartments. They are curious structures because they are framed with whatever was available, very little is standard dimension lumber. Updating them is a challenge because of this.

 

[2jakes]

There are some really good scenes of them trying to make a home in its tiny space, but unfortunately, this is the only still I could find that kinda shows it:
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[2jakes]

 

[2jakes]

POLO

 

[HadleyH1]

Mid twenties cozy and warm in winter.....well lived, living room.

Easy living.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Living room in Rockland, Maine -- 1937.

 

[TimeWarpWife]

All the busyness going on in that room would drive me crazy. I'm a simple person with simple tastes - I can't abide clutter and rooms stuffed with furniture and what-nots all over the place. My mother-in-law is a "clutterer," meaning she has a lot of stuff everywhere, and it's very difficult for me to visit with her for any length of time because it almost makes me feel claustrophobic. Thankfully, she's not like the hoarders I've seen on TV and is able to throw away things that belong in the trash.

 

[Bugguy]

^^^ That is really cool. It hasn't been that many decades since line shaft driven machine tools ruled the manufacturing world.

My father worked as a machinist and foreman at a factory like that. I remember visiting when I was young and marveling at all the drive belts.

 

[HadleyH1]

Inside the children's hairdressing salon at Harrod's, 1929

 

[2jakes]

Inside the children's hairdressing salon at Harrod's, 1929

This is first time I've seen a barber chair for children.
In my neck of the woods, the barber placed a board across the
arm chair which I sat on while he trimmed my hair.
And no matter what I told him about how much hair to take off,
he always trimmed way too much.

The pony rides were mostly available at the entrance to our
main grocery stores.
For a quarter you could ride into the sunset with Gene or Roy.

I was too shy to sit on those plastic contraptions and a quarter
was a lot of money back then. Most of my candy or baseball
cards cost 1¢.

 

[2jakes]

Typical barbershop in my area:

Except for the radio broadcasting boxing or baseball games and
the odor of hair tonic, there was nothing fancy about the place.
A rotating fan was luxury.

Always fascinated me when the barber took a leather
strap attached next to the barber chair and gave the
straight edge razor a couple of strokes or pumped
the pedal at the bottom of the chair to raise it to a
specific comfort level.
All the while talking about the “Bums from Brooklyn”

It was a very relaxing atmosphere having someone
attend to me, I felt like a king---at least for awhile.

 

[vitanola]

Here we have a museum room, which was transplanted from an apartment building at 525 Park Avenue in New York.

The room was designed in 1928 by the French firm of Alvoine, and installed in this 1915 vintage building in 1929. The firm decorated the balance of the apartment in a more conservative Louis XVI style. The owner donated this room to the Brooklyn Museum in 1971. He continued to live in that apartment until his death in 1989. Since then all traces of the 1929 decoration have been removed. The former library, which is now used as a dining room, is by far the most interesting, character -rich space in the unit, and that is not saying much.

The above represents the current taste of the current masters of the universe. I weep for the future.

 

[Fading Fast]

Here we have a museum room, which was transplanted from an apartment building at 525 Park Avenue in New York.

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The room was designed in 1928 by the French firm of Alvoine, and installed in this 1915 vintage building in 1929. The firm decorated the balance of the apartment in a more conservative Louis XVI style. The owner donated this room to the Brooklyn Museum in 1971. He continued to live in that apartment until his death in 1989. Since then all traces of the 1929 decoration have been removed. The former library, which is now used as a dining room, is by far the most interesting, character -rich space in the unit, and that is not saying much.

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The above represents the current taste of the current masters of the universe. I weep for the future.

I've walked by that building hundreds of times - it's one of the early grande dames of Park Avenue.

We live in a not-fashionable part of the town, but also in an old (not as old, 1928) apartment building.

I've mentioned this before, many people buy apartments in these old pre-war buildings, strip out all the original character, fixtures, design elements, etc. (literally, throw away the stuff we here at FL get all excited about) and build out apartments that look like the "updated" picture you show - or look like whatever is "current" or "modern" or "of the moment" in design.

Even in our humble building, most who do renovations take out all the "old stuff" and create a basically modern looking apartment (like the one you show in your last picture). A few years ago, when all-white walls with blonde floors was the au courant design flavor, a few apartments in our building were done that way.

So far as we know, we are, out of the sixty apartments in our building, the only one to do a restoration that brought back old elements and kept any original features that were still here. We got a lot of those original fixtures because the previous super loved the building and kept them "just in case" someone one day wanted to do a restoration. We also got a few things from renovations that were going on at the time as we just ask the owner if we could have them and were told, of course, we're just throwing them away (I'm shortening what was a longer process, but that, effectively, is what happened).

And here's the thing I don't understand: If you think in terms of square feet, location, building services, etc. - the price hierarchy in NYC is that brand new construction is the most expensive, then comes pre-war buildings like ours and then post-war through the 1990s (or anything not considered new or nearly new). So if you want to renovate an apartment to look modern and aren't into the pre-war details, you could do it for a meaningfully less money by buying in a post-war to 1990s building.

To be fair, some owners have said they like the pre-war feel of the building but want modern features, so I guess they like the common areas and overall exterior look of the pre-war building, but don't want that for their interior design. It's their money and they are free to do what they want with their apartment, I just feel sad to see all these great design element and features thrown away. Last comment, one of the contractors we talked with showed us an apartment he had redone on Park (in a building just like the one in your pictures) and he - at the owner's request - had made it look completely modern with, other the original wood floors, all the old details gone.

 

[tonyb]

There was a massive POW camp and training post near here called Camp Ellis. It was shut down shortly after the war ended and many buildings were sold to be moved. The local university ended up with several barracks building that they used mostly for married student housing up into the 1960's when they built apartment buildings for that purpose. I have known a few people who lived in them. A trailer would have been a step up since they were thrown together in 1942 to last only a few years. There is still a row of them in the little town I live in used as apartments. They are curious structures because they are framed with whatever was available, very little is standard dimension lumber. Updating them is a challenge because of this.

I lived for nearly two full decades in a roughly 500-square-foot house built during the war, when materials were in short supply. This place, which was demolished a few years after I moved out, was framed with 2x3's on 20-inch centers. Do the arithmetic; there was a whole lot less wood in that structure than in a standard house.

in the Seattle schools of 50-plus years ago portable classrooms were a common sight. I recall one school that was comprised entirely of portables. I wouldn't mind having one of those old portables myself. They certainly seemed well enough built. (They were made to be moved intact, after all.)

As to the stigmatization of trailers ...

I've seen some pretty darned trashy trailer parks and I've seen some pretty darned nice trailer parks. I've seen blue plastic tarps covering presumably leaking trailer roofs and old mattresses and whatnot piled up by dumpsters that didn't get emptied frequently enough. And I've seen lakefront trailer parks with golf courses and clubhouses and nary a blade of grass out of place.

Got friends living in a fifth-wheel in a semi-rural trailer park. It's what they can afford, and I respect them for living within their means. A niece and her husband and five kids live out in the woods in something larger than a doublewide. I'm not sure what they call that type of manufactured housing, but it sure is spacious. It may well be reduced to scrap within a few decades, but by then it will have served its purpose.

 

[MisterCairo]

Always loved the Beatles' pad in HELP!, especially John's sunken bed "room"