Henry J. Kaiser's assembly-line building fills need for postwar homes
Henry J. Kaiser greets the George family at the Kaiser Community Homes all-aluminum
house on Osborne Street in Panorama City.
Bancroft Library photoby Ginny McPartland, Heritage writer
Secret to mass production: Build ?chassis' for houses just as Detroit does for automobiles
A post-World War II opportunity to build thousands of small, affordable homes for returning
servicemen and their families excited Henry J. Kaiser. Mass producing homes to meet an
urgent demand fit right into Kaiser's vision of the "fifth freedom" he referred to in wartime
speeches.
President Roosevelt had enumerated for the American people the "Four Freedoms" at stake
in the war: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from
want. To this list, Kaiser added "freedom of abundance."
"Everyone who is willing to work and save has the right to be decently and comfortably
housed," Kaiser told the Conference of the National Committee on Housing in Chicago in
1944.
Kaiser had been involved in many housing projects during the war that required fast
construction. Under Kaiser's sponsorship and with federal financial aid, noted San
Francisco Bay Area builder David Bohannon had built the 700-home community of
Rollingwood for shipyard workers in Richmond, Calif., in just 693 hours.
Kaiser revolutionized ship construction by turning it into an assembly line and prefabrication
industry. Workers trained in new techniques set production records in Kaiser's wartime
shipyards on the San Francisco Bay and the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.
By the time the war was over, Henry Kaiser was more than ready to start building homes as
fast as possible. Financing was available through the GI Bill and the Federal Housing
Authority, so people were ripe for homeownership.
Kaiser joined forces with builder Fritz Burns and devised a plan to develop two- and
three-bedroom, roughly 1,000-square foot homes that were attractive, affordable and
distinct from one another. Preassembly of various home components made it
possible to build about 40 homes a day, each constructed with about 40
manufactured panels.
Architects' rendering of Kaiser Housing development in 1948. Bancroft Library photo
Kaiser Community Homes built a factory In Westchester in Southern California and
began to manufacture and preassemble puzzle-like pieces to be trucked to the home
sites. Within the factory, there were assembly lines for production of interior,
exterior, floor and ceiling panels. In other areas, workers built kitchen cabinets,
bathrooms, and assembled plumbing parts.
"Science Illustrated" magazine carried a description of the Kaiser house-building
concept:
"As you look at a block of Kaiser Homes you can't find two that look alike, and yet
each house is the same in interior construction. This is the secret of Kaiser's mass
production plan; he builds ?chassis' for houses, as Detroit builds chassis for
automobiles.
"The chassis consists of a rectangular core of five and a half rooms. This he turns
out in a sprawling 15-acre factory. Garages, roofs, porches are also mass-produced,
but they are put on the chassis in a variety of ways.
"One house may have the garage attached at the right front corner. One may have it
at the left rear corner. Or a third may have it completely detached," the February 1947
article reads.
Related to his homebuilding enterprise, Kaiser considered retooling the Richmond
shipyards as a manufacturing site for developing a preassembled "mechanical core
or heart" for his homes, which would have included the kitchen, bath and utility
rooms.
The Kaiser design planned for a monolithic unit: floor and wall panels, cabinets,
countertops, lavatory, and prewired and plumbed equipment.
Developer Fritz Burns and Henry J. Kaiser set up a model home on Wiltshire
Boulevard in Los Angeles to show their postwar home plans to the public.The
Kaisercraft Coordinated Kitchen was to feature a stove, sink, cabinets, refrigerator,
dishwasher and garbage disposal. Plans for the core unit were eventually scrapped
due to the expense that would be added to the price of the homes, which were
intended to be low cost.
Henry J. Kaiser probably made his biggest splash as a homebuilder in 1948 when he
awarded his prototype "all-aluminum home," the only one of its kind, to the winning
contestant on the "People Are Funny" radio game show hosted by Art Linkletter.
The winner, Vivienne George, moved her family from a ramshackle house in
Lebanon, Ore., to Panorama City, where they became the first residents of the Kaiser
Community Homes, dubbed by Los Angeles regional planners as a "model suburb."
Vivienne was married to Ward George, a disabled WWII veteran, and the couple had
two children.
A Kaiser Homes press release described the George family's prize: "A beautifully
furnished home with range, refrigerator, Kaiser hydraulic dishwasher and disposal
unit and a two-car garage. In the garage stands a 1948 Kaiser sedan." Previously, a
model for potential buyers to tour, the all-aluminum home was moved from the
corner of Chase and Van Nuys streets to Osborne Street for the Georges.
The 65-year-old Kaiser Homes "model community" in Panorama City still stands amid
other development in the vicinity today. The area has fallen on hard times in recent
years and a community effort is under way to reinvigorate the neighborhood and
surrounding postwar subdivisions and businesses.