Ocean Grove Camp Meeting

The tents of Ocean Grove

The Tents of Ocean Grove, NJ  

I recently had the opportunity to take a trip to Ocean Grove, NJ.  This is a shore town immediately south of Asbury Park, but the two towns are more than a world apart.  Ocean Grove is home to a unique colony of canvas platform tents.  These tents are actually a huge part of Ocean Grove's history.  The town began as a Methodist Church Camp in 1869.  The Methodist Church built a HUGE auditorium for meetings in the center of town, which is still standing (and still very much in use).  This was the heyday of what was called the "Holiness Movement" (sometimes referred to as the Revivalist movement) and these summer communities sprung up all over the country with the idea of people coming together for worship and cleansing.  The tents of Ocean Grove were the first structures to be used at the site.  ...But why are they still there???

The inside of the ENORMOUS Ocean Grove Auditorium.  It seats almost 9,000.

St. Paul, inspecting material for his trade.

Why Tents?  (Warning--History/Religious Content)  

There is a very long history in the Christian faiths of tents as a metaphor as well as practical use.  Most people point to the fact that this is because the apostle Paul (arguably one of the most influential apostles for the spread of early Christianity) supported himself as a tentmaker.  These camp meetings are often called "revivalist" meetings or "tent" meetings.  The term "tentmaking" is used to describe someone who works for the church but supports themselves in another manner (like Paul).  Ever hear our political parties refer to their range and scope as "a big tent"?  Guess what--same root usage.  Tents can be put up quickly and can be used for a variety of uses--sleeping, cooking, worship, etc.  So tents and Christianity have a long, symbiotic relationship.

A common sight during the "Holiness" Movement.

Back to the Tents  

The tents themselves are almost all 14' wide by 21' long.  Originally there were several sizes, but now all are a standard size.  Interestingly enough, all have uniform fronts, though they are not decorated in uniform colors.  The tents are elevated on wooden platforms and are supported by wooden outriggers on either side.  The tents have wooden front doors that lock, offering a small amount of security.  The tents have a rain fly which is suspended above the actual body of the tent--this gives some protection from the rain, but also some relief from the heat.  If you talk to those who inhabit the tents, privacy is hard to come by--sound travels very freely between the tents--but that increases the feeling of community (one of the original goals of the meeting!).  The tents are rented on a yearly basis and are inhabited, as is the tradition, from May 15th to September 15th.  

Tent with the auditorium steeple in the background

Front of a tent showing the door and porch.

Close-up of the fly/roof assembly.

Outriggers provide support, as well as a means to decorate!

View of the side of a tent showing the cabin.

The "Cabins"  

The canvas tents are actually only half of a two-room structure.  Over the years, one-room cottages were added to the rear of the tents (all of them have this now).  This room acts as the kitchen.  All of the tents currently have a small bathroom and have hot water and electricity.  This is all done through the cabin.  As I was wandering through the tent community, it was about 3:00 and the temperature was almost 100 degrees.  Lots of the tents had window air conditioners installed in the rear cottage portion.  The cabin is also where the canvas tent and furnishings are stored in the winter months.

View of the rear of the tents showing the cabins.

A patriotic row.

The Tents Today  

Today, the tents are still rented by the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association.  As far as modern real estate law is concerned, the tents are treated like condos--some individual ownership, some communal ownership.  At one point, there were nearly 400 tents in Ocean Grove, but now there are only 114--a number that will most likely remain stagnant for the foreseeable future.  The tents are still rented on a year-to-year basis, but priority is given to families who have rented one in the past.  There are many tents that have been in the same family for three or four generations.  Modern zoning is prohibitive to such an establishment, but the tents are grandfathered.  The tents are as much a part of the identity and history of Ocean Grove as is the Auditorium, the beach, the boardwalk, or any other civic establishment.  

Patriotic Row

Unusual diagonal row.

Historic view of Ocean Grove.  My how beachwear has changed.

The Techbuilt House

The Techbuilt House  
Have you ever been inside a barn--a traditional post and beam barn?  Barns are amazing feats of engineering and construction.  They have soaring ceilings, large usable spaces, and very few (if any) interior walls to break the space up.  How is this accomplished?  A traditional barn is actually a self-supporting exterior skeleton that is enclosed merely by non-structural sheathing, making interior walls unnecessary for structural purposes.  It is this concept, along with some other prefabrication techniques, that led Carl Koch and his associates to design and market one of the most successful enterprises in mass-produced houses--the Techbuilt House.

Concept  
The Techbuilt house is essentially a house built out of standardized panels.  These panels are four foot wide with varying lengths (depending upon their purpose).  Everything in a Techbuilt house is a pre-constructed panel--walls, roof, floors, etc.  These panels were constructed in a factory and assembled on site.  The variation in the type and placement of panels allowed for a variety of design while still keeping costs down.  The result was a very sleek, modern looking house that could be erected for about $8 a square foot--at a time when a conventional "stick built" house cost around $10 a square foot.  Below is a characteristic example of a Techbuilt.

Attics and Basements  

As you may have gathered from previous posts at Instant House, basements are the exception rather than the norm in prefabricated housing.  Basements present problems for the designer of the prefabricated house.  Techbuilt houses are unique in that Koch chose to sink either the primary living level or the bedroom level 1/2 story below grade, resulting in a "half" basement.  This allowed for a proper foundation (below the frost-line), but still left enough usable space above grade for properly sized windows--giving the feeling of a fully finished floor.  Koch's concept for the second floor was to leave the space open to the rafters.  He called this "putting an attic on top of a basement", which led to a maximum use of space in two of the most problematic (and wasteful) spaces in the traditional house.  This is the forerunner of the modern day "bi-level" or "split-level" house.  See the diagram at right for an example.  

The Construction  

As is the case with most stressed-skin panels, they are remarkably light yet strong (think:  airplane engineering).  Koch claimed that the panels can easily be unloaded by two men--though four is ideal.  In his magnum opus work At Home With Tomorrow, he claims that four men working without special equipment can set up the shell and roof of a house in two days time.  One gable end and the two side walls are erected and bolted together.  The other gable end remains open until the first and second floor panels have been installed.  You can see from the diagram at the right how the entire house is framed much like a barn, with very little interior structural members.  

Decorating A Techbuilt Home  

Modernist houses aren't for everyone, and neocolonial or other traditional furniture and decoration styles don't work very well in many modernist houses.  Koch himself states that "Techbuilts have never been aesthetically foolproof...The simplicity of the house itself puts some responsibility on the buyer not to overstuff or overdecorate it."  As such, Techbuilt attempted to offer its own line of furniture--Techbuilt Spacemaking Furniture.  It did work out and proved too costly to manufacture.  See the examples at right.

Techbuilt Communities

Weston Historical Commission

Garrett Park

More on Techbuilt to come, including Vacation Homes!  But for now, here are two examples of the "attic-on-top-of-a-basement" homes.  Enjoy!

California Kits - Sears of the West

Pacific Ready-Cut Homes

Another Ready-Cut Variant  
The Los Angeles company Pacific Ready-Cut Homes manufactured pre-cut homes in the fashion of Sears & Roebuck from 1908-1940.  The company maintained its own lumber mills in close proximity to the port of Los Angeles, allowing for easy shipping across the pacific.  Pacific was mostly a "regional" company.  Sears had sales centers throughout the country, but Pacific did not.  Pacific's promotional materials encouraged prospective buyers to visit their "exhibition grounds" to view the sample homes.

The Homes 
Like the Sears and Aladdin homes, the Pacific Ready-Cut Homes bear a strong allegiance to the craftsman architectural style, with a "Spanish Mission" or "Mediterranean" flare.  *Side note--this type of exoticism was common in the 1910s and 1920s in middle-class architecture.  My mother lives in a home in Berks County, PA that has a Mediterranean influence, despite the fact that no one in 1920s Berks County had ever been to the Mediterranean!  Back to Pacific Homes--these homes have one major difference between Sears and the others--size.  For the most part, the Pacific Ready-Cut homes were quite small.  A quick perusal of their catalogs reveals that almost none of their homes had a second story.  Most were designed to be built without basements (in keeping with California tradition).  Like the other major companies, Pacific offered trim, fireplaces, and other finishes for the homes.

Courts
The Los Angeles convention of clustering lots of smaller homes on one oversized lot--commonly called a "court"--is reflected in Pacific's offerings.  Some of their "court units" even included a second story.  See below for examples.

Hang Ten, Anyone?
Pacific Ready-Cut Homes stopped building and shipping pre-cut homes in 1940, but they continued to build....surfboards!  The son of the owner convinced his father to craft some surfboards out of their residual redwood stock.  At some point the name was changed to Waikiki Surfboards, and they continued to build 10-foot long 70 lb redwood surfboards into the first years of World War II.

A Typical House

Style 66 - A Nice Example of a Quaint Home

The Court Units

Four Different Court Varieties

A Spanish Mission Home

Another "quaint" home--with a Mission!

More Modest - TINY Kitchen!

Modest 2 BR with a TINY kitchen!

Interior Views

More Lustron Stuff

More Lustron Stuff

I recently found a picture on the internet of a Lustron being erected in an urban environment.  This has to be the one-and-only Lustron erected as a model home in Chicago.  Here is the picture:

Check out the building site.  For a supposedly "prefabricated house", there sure are a lot of components being assembled on-site!  Hang onto that thought...

Lustron's (Almost) Savior
I was scouring Carl Koch's (of Techbuilt fame) book about his history with prefabricated housing - At Home With Tomorrow.  Koch was brought on during the last few years of Lustron to re-tool and revamp the Lustron.  He devotes a chapter to his stint with Lustron.  He identified four key problems with the Lustron product.  Quoted from the book:

1.  The original Lustron model used four different sizes of window in a fixed arrangement.  We reduced them to one--but so designed as to be triple-hung and completely interchangeable with solid wall panels of the same size, so that we could make any combination with these few panels.  Putting two such sections side-by-side would permit not twelve but thirty-six variations.  Three, side by side, would offer two hundred and sixteen.  Not all of them would be useful, needless to say, but the law of combinations is one of the pleasant mathematical secrets of modular planning.


2.  Since the enameled walls of the Lustron house were permanent, in and out (the enamel would chip away in places when the house was put together, but was easily patched), it followed that wall color was permanent too.  This could be a little hard on a housewife, who, having lived with green surroundings for several years, might suddenly decide she liked brown better, or yellow, or white.  If green was what she had selected, green was what she had.  So what we recommended was that inside wall color be made as unobtrusive as possible, neutral--shades of gray, in fact.  Then the color motif of the house could be established by the housewife herself, by the generous use of color in rugs, fabrics, furniture, drapes, and the like--things that COULD be changed.


3.  The original Lustron house was fixed, as to size and interior plan.  We discovered, working with a basic size of 29 by 37 feet, and an expanded size of 29 by 45 feet, that Lustron could offer four different interior plans in each, including several for three bedrooms.  Any of these plans, moreover, could be "flipped," that is to say, built as a mirror image of itself.  And all plans, together, would use the same component parts, with virtually no exception.


4.  The number of separate components which would arrive by truck, to be assembled on site by individual builders, we reduced from three thousand to thirty-seven by providing for the assembly of window sections, storage walls, plumbing walls, and so forth in the plant itself.  Lustron, indeed, was already on the trail of this simplification.  

Re-read number four.  3,000 parts to be assembled on-site????   No wonder this thing didn't take off.  One of the three key advantages in prefabricated housing is SPEED.  The second is SIMPLIFICATION.  3,000 parts doesn't sound like either.  37 is more like it.  Sadly, Koch's Lustron didn't take off in time, and only one model home was ever built.  Pics below.

The 1950 Koch Lustron

Living Room

Dining Room

Bedroom

Leisurama - An Impulse Buy???

The House That Macy's Built  
Americans are impulse buyers.  We buy everything imaginable on impulse--food, clothing, computers, gift cards, cars even.....but a vacation home?  Believe it or not, Macy's tried to extend this American way of consuming to the housing market, with a little-known project entitled "Leisurama".  The scheme was this--offer a modestly-priced turn-key vacation home in Montauk within walking distance to the beach that the average New Yorker could afford.  Add to this a complete model of a home for viewing on the 9th floor of their flagship store, and have sales associates standing by ready to take orders before people could think twice about it or even VISIT THE SITE!!!!!  The shocking thing.....in the early 1960s, it almost worked.

The Location  
These homes were located in Culloden Point in Montauk, Long Island.  Because of their identical appearance and the iconic front window, the neighborhood was soon known as the "Levittown at the beach".  Culloden was the ideal place as the land could be acquired relatively cheaply because of its location on the north side of the island and its relative proximity to Camp Hero (with its spooky tales of invisibility, mind control, time travel and "Reptoids").  The Montauk location was also convenient for most New Yorkers - a fairly short drive or a short trip on the Long Island Railroad.  Culloden was the bargain beach with all the glamor of the Hamptons.

1965 view of the development.  The landscape has since grown in.

Original design concept for the Leisurama

The Design  

The Leisurama homes had a striking modern appearance.  The front window and the carport figured prominently in the design of all the Leisuramas.  The homes were one story with a low-pitched roof which also added to the modernist appearance.  Because the homes weren't really designed for permanent living, the footprint of the homes was kept small--two bedrooms was a big Leisurama.  Like many other mass-produced houses, they were constructed on slab constructions.  There were three models constructed--the "Convertible", the "Expanded Convertible", and the "Villa" (see below for floor plans).  The Covertible and Expanded Convertible were offered for sale.  The Villa was designed as a rental unit for people to test-drive the Leisurama lifestyle.  

The Convertible

The Expanded Convertible

Pricing and Sales  
The cost of one of these Leisurama homes?  $12,900--furnished in every way imaginable down to the linens and toothbrushes.  You chose from one of two floorplans (the convertible or the expanded convertible), you chose one of four color schemes, you paid your deposit and then.....you waited to pick up your key!  Macy's boasted that all you needed to bring was the food for the refrigerator...which was included.  In fact, a full line of General Electric appliances were included, even a combination washer/dryer.  The houses contained a MURPHY BED!  Exciting but impractical, according to those who populated the Leisuramas.

Leisurama Interior - Featuring the Murphy Bed!

Photo of a complete Leisurama on the 9th Floor of Macy's Herald Square

Leisurama's Demise and Legacy
The price was a little too good to be true...for the seller, anyway.  Macy's and All-State Properties lost money on each house.  This, more than anything, led to the quick demise of the Leisurama experiment.  Construction problems also plagued the project.  The project had grand aspirations, but only about 200 Leisuramas were built.  Many still survive and dot the Culloden Shores landscape, but most have been modified from their original appearance.  Some have been sold as "tear downs", others have been enlarged to reflect the current "McMansion" garishness that is typical of contemporary shore homes.  Leisurama Homes reflect something that currently doesn't exist in the Northeast shore culture anymore--modest, affordable vacation homes.  Take a trip on Long Island or down the New Jersey shoreline and look at the beachfront monstrosities--what normal person can maintain a second home of that magnitude?  Or even a primary magnitude????  The Leisurama wasn't perfect, but it was a great way to have a modest getaway home that exhibits modern design.

Models and Floor Plans
Below are the floor plans of the three models as they appeared in a Macy's sales brochure.

Gunnison "Magic" Homes

From the May, 1943 edition of "The Rotarian" magazine

Press a Button, Get a House!
This post returns to the "roots" of Instant House - post WWII housing needs.  During the late '40s and through the 1950s, the Gunnison Housing Corporation churned out many prefabricated houses, billed as "Gunnison Magic Homes".  These homes were built as panelized homes and were screwed together on-site, usually on a slab.  Foster Gunnison, the owner, publicly acknowledged his dream of becoming "the Henry Ford of housing", utilizing mass-production techniques in his factory to create his patented stressed-skin panels that when put together would create a home with a very short amount of time-on-site.  Though originally a lighting engineer (famous project included the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center).

The Gunnison Patented System  
Foster Gunnison filed for a patent in August of 1938 for a panelized system of construction.  This system was specifically designed for "houses of various sizes and a plurality of floor plans [that] can be readily constructed from standard interchangeable parts."  Four figure drawings from the patent are on the right, and they reveal some key features.  The panels were bolted together rather than stick-built.  There actually was insulation in the middle of the panels.  The panels were attached to the slab by bolts.  The panels were structural, but they were also FINISHED!  Joints were covered by moldings--inside and out.  The panels came complete with installed metal-framed casement windows and brass-fixtured pre-hung doors.  Gunnison used these standardized panels in order to create 11 different models--everything from a very modest 24-foot by 24-foot 2 bedroom model to a large four bedroom 2.5 bath model.

Pictures of the Gunnison Factory

"Lustron" Redux?  Not Quite...  
If you read my previous post on the Lustron home, then you know that other companies had tried the factory-mass production model.  Gunnison was more successful than Lustron because of the standardized panel system.  While Lustron used interchangeable parts, every house left the factory as a mishmash of parts (on a specially built company truck, no less).  Gunnison stockpiled panel components which could be shipped on a standard truck with much less hassle.  Also, the Gunnison homes looked more traditional and featured more traditional building materials such as.....wood and asphalt shingles.


Gunnison's End
Foster Gunnison sold his controlling interest in his company to U.S. Steel in 1944 while maintaining oversight.  He retired outright in 1953 and U.S. Steel became the sole owner.  U.S. Steel continued to produce panelized, stressed-skin homes until they closed their housing division in 1974.

Three Gunnisons

Interior View of a Gunnison Home

Present-Day Gunnison in Sayreville, NJ.  Thank you to Eric Dietrich (owner/photographer).
Bay window not original.