ARCHITECTS’ PRINCIPLES
House in a Box
Text by Russell Versaci
Photos by James Westphalen
Production houses may become the new tradition in residential building.
Our great-great-grandparents would
have been horrified by the idea of a
house built in a factory. “A house in a
box? It’s unnatural! It can’t be done! It
will never last!” You can imagine the
howls of righteous indignation.
Times have changed...or have they?
Over the last hundred years, surprisingly
little has changed in our attitude toward
factory home building. We still consider
it novel and bizarre, and certainly second-rate, despite the fact that, at the turn
of the last century, houses built in factories blossomed across America as Sears
Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, Aladdin
and their imitators cranked out wellloved houses for the middleclass.
So why our contemporary disdain
for the manufactured house? In part, the
blame lies in what happened after the
beloved kit homes of the 1920s, when
the house on wheels was born. Following
the lean years of the Depression and the
dislocations of World War II, home
building soared in the 1950s with the
invention of the suburban tract home
and its nomadic cousin, the mobile
home. Mobile homes were small, cheap,
and light enough to be towed behind
the family car. Cheap was the label
that stuck, though, and mobile homes
were stigmatized.
Twentieth-century Modernists were
not deterred. Unable to resist the
romance of a house on wheels, the idea
of a “prefab” house was a recurring fantasy for architects trying to invent a
home that could be mass-produced like
an automobile. Le Corbusier dreamed
about building a “machine for living.”
Buckminster Fuller toyed with a trailerable stainless steel igloo he called his
“Dymaxion House.” Lesser lights tried
their hand at everything from collapsibles to inflatables to modulars. None of
their ideas ever caught on with a public
who remained skeptical about these
novel experiments in homes.
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Old-House Journal’s New Old House
Maybe the answer to a house in a
box is not to reinvent the wheel. As with
all things of lasting value, tradition may
provide a ready-made answer. Why not
look back to the last time factory home
building actually resonated with the
public? The kit homes of the 1920s offer
a successful formula.
Let’s look at the Sears model. All the
pieces to build a Sears “Modern Home”
were precut to size in a lumberyard,
numbered, palletized, and shipped by
railroad car to a building site for assembly. The kit included everything from
studs to siding to windows and doors to
It’s hard to believe the charming Sarah Taylor House
was built this year. Designed and manufactured by
Connor Building in Vermont, this production house is
a perfect example of a growing trend in the new old
house market.
roof shingles, plus hardware and plumbing fixtures and kitchen cabinets—in
short, everything including the kitchen
sink. It was a complete house in a box,
accompanied by a thorough set of
instructions so that even a handy homeowner could build his own house with a
little help from his friends.
Today an updated version of the
same system is called “panelization.” In
Winter 2007
ARCHITECTS’ PRINCIPLES
this new version, complete stud walls are
assembled in a factory along with their
windows and doors. Floor joists and roof
rafters are precut to size; millwork details
for cornices, window casings, and door
surrounds are prebuilt; and staircases
and kitchen cabinets are readymade.
They are shipped to the building site in
two or three flatbed truckloads timed so
that materials arrive just when they are
needed. The result can be every bit as
charming as a Sears bungalow.
A newer edition of systems building
is called “modular” construction. As the
name implies, this system involves building modules, or complete boxes that are
joined together to make a house. You
have seen modular sections being driven
down the highway—wide loads on
flatbed trucks wrapped in plastic sheets.
When they get to the building site, they
are hoisted by crane onto foundations
and bolted together into a complete
house. The walls and floor finishes are
tidied up, the electrical wiring, plumbing, and heating ducts are coupled
together, and viola!—a finished home.
What’s the point, you may ask? Why
not just build a good traditional house
the old-fashioned way, one stick at a
time? Just ask any builder about the state
of today’s home building industry. Good
stick building is not easy anymore. It’s
hard finding knowledgeable tradesmen
who are actually available to properly lay
out a stud wall, miter a crown molding,
or set a tile floor in mud, they’re in such
high demand. Have you gone to the
lumberyard lately to find a nice, clean,
straight 2 x 4? Lumber quality has deteriorated so badly that you have to cull
through a whole pallet to find a decent
stick. What about doors and windows?
These days a good double-hung wood
window is considered a premium add-on
rather than standard issue. And nothing
has gotten any cheaper. Today good stick
building is difficult and expensive.
If it’s so hard to build well, what
purpose is served by building in a factory? A home-building plant is like a fine
woodworking shop, filled with precision
cutting, clamping, and nailing equipment often run by computer programs
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Old-House Journal’s New Old House
that streamline production and minimize
waste. The people running this equipment are highly trained and concentrate
on performing specific tasks. They work
in ideal conditions throughout the
year instead of dodging the weather.
Every job is done on the flat rather
than going up and down ladders. In
short, it’s a systems-based approach to
home building—just like Henry Ford’s
assembly line.
Because a factory can order and
store lumber in bulk, higher-grade materials can be purchased for about the same
price. Almost nothing goes to waste
because the cutoffs are used for blocking
or sheathing small areas. Once the rough
frames are built, the finishing work
begins. High-quality decay-resistant
woods are used to make corner boards
and trim moldings. Door and window
casings are mitered and fitted into place,
Interior details of the Sarah Taylor House include the
historically inspired staircase as well as historically
accurate trim work.
and crown moldings are precut and
assembled in long runs. Even the clapboard siding is cut to length and numbered for easy assembly. Nothing is left
to chance, and it all goes out the door on
pallets, shipped to the job site with a
how-to manual.
It’s hard to discount all of these
advantages. There is still the old stigma,
of course, that it just can’t be done as
well. The truth is that factory-built
houses are sometimes better than their
stick-built cousins. Today many of the
best builders in America are taking a
hard look, and some are already committed to the benefits of panelization. The
future of a new old house just may rest
on the promise of a house in a box. NOH
Winter 2007