| SUMMARY:
The Charles and Fae Olson Residence is proposed for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A for its contribution to the understanding of the post-World War II housing boom. The residence encapsulates the trend of the World War II Veteran returning from service to build his own house, which he designed during the war. The Olson’s preserved wartime correspondence reveals how the husband-and-wife team exchanged ideas and drawings of their “dream house.” Following the many frustrating years of waiting, they purchased property and built, while they lived in, the new house. This large house is a collage of contemporary architectural thought gleaned by the designers from exhibitions, magazines, and books. The construction was accomplished largely by Charles, with help from his children, with materials logged from the site, salvaged from the Vanport flood, and purchased locally from Montgomery Ward. It was designed and built by a schoolteacher, and it is a study in economy, overcoming the problems of cost in post war Contemporary Modern housing.
NATIONAL TRENDS:
A major trend in post-war American housing began with the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, “G.I. Bill,” of 1944. This law made it possible for servicemen to entertain the thought of a “dream house.” It became common for servicemen to write home during the war with thoughts about their future house. For servicemen and women and their spouses languishing all over the world, waiting for the battles to be over, it was a relief to think and plan about their house of the future. A 1944 article in House Beautiful noted that “it is seldom, indeed, that a group of GI’s get together that the conversation doesn’t sooner or later get around to it. Every man has a dream–house for the post-war period….There is a girl back home, or in the WAC, who shares this particular dream.”
Following an invitation for servicemen to describe their dream houses, House Beautiful reported that, “…we can say that the majority of letters showed a marked desire for change, progress, and a breaking of the shackles of sentimentality in design.” As one of the letters states, “In the first place we are ‘Moderns,’ and you will find that the majority of Yanks are leaning in that direction.” An earlier article, also in House Beautiful, stated, “Modern has strong adherents among the manly, probably because it’s direct and functional and gives them a feeling of lots of space to move around in.”
“Flat-Roofed Contemporary Modern,” the term used to describe this architecture, was familiar to the designers of this period and they knew what the words meant. The style springs from the International Style, but the siding material is not so severe, the overhanging roof more livable, and the connection to the ground and nature an important philosophical change. “No visible roof” is an ”Usonian concept,” and is at the core of the style. Slab on grade is another Usonian concept, which pulls the style to the ground. This style does not have the sophisticated understanding of the vertical and horizontal associated with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian designs, but there is an overlap. There is also an overlap with the “ranch” concepts of open planning, and connecting with interior space with the outside. These are modern concepts, which were natural additions to the ranch tradition. “The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard J. Neutra, Mies Van der Rohe, and other modernists inspired many architects to look to new solutions for livable homes using modern materials of glass, steel, and concrete, and principles of organic design that utilized cantilevered forms, glass curtain walls, and post-and-beam construction. The contemporary home featured the integration of indoor and outdoor living area and open floor plan, which allowed a sense of flowing space. Characteristics such as masonry hearth walls, patios and terraces, carports, and transparent walls in the form of sliding-glass doors and floor-to-ceiling windows became hallmarks of the contemporary residential design.”
Magazines were very influential in focusing popular opinion before and after the War. “Between 1936 and 1950 forty-one surveys were taken” by magazines in order to determine the public interest around which articles were written, and House Beautiful had several articles picturing contemporary houses designed for veterans, or that were built for little money by owners. “During the war, government and industry both played up the suburban house to the families of absent servicemen.”
Following the War this desire to build a dream house coincided with a severe American housing shortage. “Continuing a trend begun during the Great Depression, six million families were doubling up with relatives or friends by 1947, and another 500,000 were occupying Quonset huts or temporary quarters. Neither figure included families living in substandard dwellings or those in desperate need of more room.” “The need was intense. People were doubled up with relatives, friends, and strangers, war worker and veteran lived in rooming houses and camped out in cars. Some tried to convert chicken coops and barns into family housing,” “By 1950 the national suburban growth rate was ten times that of central cities, and in 1954 the editors of Fortune estimated that nine million people had moved to the suburbs in the previous decade …between 1946 and 1956, about ninty-seven percent of all new single-family dwellings were completely detached, surrounded on every side by their own plots.”
“More than most people realized, the determining factor in 1950’s middle-class suburban house construction was cost, measured both in time and money.” The anticipated house of the future would be built in a factory, but in reality suburbia was the factory. The first efficiency was to have only one house plan and for all the parts to fit any house. A “rapid production of houses in a continuous production process” was pioneered by 1939. For the large builder, it was cost effective to own a lumber company along with a forest. “All materials from nails to appliances were made to exact specifications and purchased through a subsidiary…Materials arrived precut and ‘combat loaded,’ so that the first items needed were on top….They built thousands of almost identical 800-square-foot houses…” They hired non-union workers who were equipped with new small power tools to perform repetitive operations on house after house. Compared to skilled carpentry, the de-skilled work was boring.” After the war the FHA approved the Cape Cod and later the Ranch House avoiding the Contemporary Modern. The Usonian House was not approved even though it was well thought out and revolutionary for holding down costs. Further, the suburban lot was the only lot considered appropriate for an FHA loan. A serviceman who wanted to follow his wartime design and dream of a Modern Contemporary house built upon a hill was on his own. Architects were essentially left out of the equation, and were left to write books and magazine articles.
Pattern books have passed on the flow of ideas in American housing for centuries. In mid- nineteenth century Oregon alone there are architectural examples of Asher Benjamin, A. J. Downing, and Henry W. Cleaveland. They all authored pattern books aimed at changing the culture’s fixation on the Greek Revival. Similarly, the pattern books published between 1946 and 1950, directed at the post-war housing boom, were all looking to alter public perceptions about housing and were specifically opposed to the Cape Cod. In 1946 Tomorrows House, by the editors of “Architectural Forum,” was attempting to change attitudes about what was truly needed in a house for both the public and the professional. In 1946 Sunset Western Ranch House by Cliff May and the editors of Sunset were pushing a more relaxed lifestyle, ideas and plans, and in 1947, Homes, by the producers of Progressive Architecture, recommended hiring an architect to get a special home that fit your family and your site. Compared to the nineteenth century, the twentieth century had enormous quantities of books and magazines to read. A normal person could not possibly have been exposed to them all but they were exposed to each other and the same ideas sprang forth over and over in the different publications. Each may have had a particular style bias based on contacts. Cliff May was associated with Sunset. A reader of House Beautiful might not fully understand the importance of “Ranch” design just as the reader of Sunset might not recognize that Modern concepts could exist without Ranch Architecture. In the end it did not matter because the sheer number of ranch houses defined the period. Post-war housing was not about architecture, it was about money.
LOCAL TRENDS:
The local trend in Gresham mirrored on a humble scale what was happening nationally. In Gresham between 1946 and 1950, there are 170 new houses built in or just out of the City limits. There is no official information as to whether they were owner built or if they belonged to veterans. These houses are largely filling in areas in existing neighborhoods. Norman Street, where there were a remarkable number of new houses, has a row of Sears Kit homes. The other houses are sprinkled around and are very identifiable having the familiar materials: striated shakes, manufactured windows with horizontal proportions, glass block, a generous use of brick and hipped, almost eaveless, or Cape Cod roofs. A few modest attempts at Modern Contemporary can be found. In general the buildings appear to be the work of either the owner or small contractors and many fit the model that would have been approved by the FHA. The typical postwar home, which was mass- produced in a development by a single contractor, and which overwhelmed existing infrastructure, was not a local pattern. On Gresham Butte, separated from the city by Johnson Creek, there were only ten dwellings built before 1955. One was manufactured (a trailer), and six were owner built, two by veterans. Many people were struggling to build housing for themselves and many of those would have been veterans.
BACKGROUND:
Charles H. Olson was born in 1908 in Linwood, a small town on the Utah/Wyoming border, where his father clerked at a store. The family homesteaded a small protected plot near Manilla Utah where they attempted to make a living farming. Charles grew up there in a hand-hewn log house with a clay roof built by his father. This house fit the “ranch-house” criteria and it was always described as such The family moved to Evanston, Wyoming in 1926 in favor of their children’s education. Charles’ father was involved there in a failed chicken business.
Charles went to high school in Evanston but he also started a machinist apprenticeship. He boarded and took night classes while working for the Union Pacific railroad in Cheyenne, Wyoming and graduated from Cheyenne High School in 1932. He enlisted in the Wyoming National Guard in 1931 to play trumpet in the army band. He attended classes at the University of Utah in the fall of 1932, graduated from the ROTC in 1936, and received his Bachelor’s degree in Music there in 1939. Charles played trumpet in a jazz band that toured the Midwest in 1933. His interest in jazz and the railroad pass he held from working as a machinist got him to Chicago where he attended the Worlds Fair. Charles Olson taught math for Gresham Union High School starting in 1946. This subject took less outside time than a band instructor, leaving more time to work on the house. He was head of the math department at Centennial High School after 1959. After the house construction was under control he worked in the summers for Tektronix as a machinist and he pioneered the job of machinist in the Physics department at Reed College. In his later years he was best known as a ski instructor.
Fae Cottam was born in Provo Utah in 1916. Her father taught botany at Brigham Young University until the early 1930’s when he was asked to leave because he taught evolution. The family moved to Salt Lake City where Fae attended East High School. They lived in a remarkably small 1929 house where the five children focused on grades and education. Fae majored in art while attending the University of Utah where her father was teaching. She later switched majors and graduated in psychology. Charles took every available job while he worked his way through college and was working as a model for a drawing class when he met Fae.
Charles and Fae married in 1938 and had two children born during the war in 1941 and 1943. Charles was an officer, eventually holding the rank of captain, and was transferred from fort to fort during the war with Fae attempting to follow him with the children. Their need for housing was a constant subject when they wrote letters while apart all through the war. They were in a schematic phase of the house design in late November and early December 1944 when the relevant letters were written. On November 25, 1944 Charles wrote in a letter, “I have been trying to work out our dreamhouse again today.” Fae was living with her parents, and Charles was on a ship anchored “somewhere in the Pacific”. Fae guessed which day he wrote each letter and wrote that date on the envelope. It is clear that they had been in this process for some time. Charles and Fae never had a government-backed loan, but they were totally involved with the excitement of planning a “dream house.”
WARTIME DESIGN:
Conditions on the ship could have been better for the task of house design. Charles wrote: “I think I could do better with an eraser….I tacked this one on a board to work on outside this afternoon, but as you see the weather was a little rough. It was hard to hold down in the wind but I enjoyed the coolness while working it out.” Being on board the ship did have advantages. His knowledge of architecture at the time would not have been possible without some assistance. “ I have finished several books and gone through all the magazines available.” Many years later he said, “I had studied Frank Lloyd Wright books while in the service.”
Charles’ war letters are love letters, but they are also a presentation of his design ideas. He wrote: “I have a sunken living in my head so if you don’t like the idea you had better let me know quick. It will be two steps below everything except the patio, which will be connected by two French doors.” “I have never mentioned the deck I have had in mind all the time. I still don’t know for sure how it will work out but I have shown it here with a vertical ladder. As you see it has a railing. It sits out over the eaves so that it can be about six feet wide or deep and no higher than a foot or so about the eave.” (This may be the beginning of the flat roof.) “What do you think about the basement windows here?” Fae tended to be pleased and impressed. “I think you have a very dramatic idea in your front entrance, landing, and sunken living room.” She added, “The patio looks wonderful.”
The patio was built with many of the ideas presented in the drawing and many of those ideas are informal, like the ranch house definition, but they also are common in other architectural books and magazines at the time. Charles had ideas of an open plan and privacy: “I tried to give the impression one might get after entering the front door. The idea is to see into the dining room to give a feeling of depth, withholding the living room from first glance. Then, when in the living room I have tried to block the dining room from view.”
Fae had ideas of her own. She was influenced by a house they rented at Hick’s lake, likely a Craftsman home, during the time Charles was stationed at Fort Lewis. Her ideas were to be used in a “cabin.” Previously, she had painted a watercolor in college titled “A Cabin in the Woods.” Charlie worked on the cabin design as well. “This cabin shouldn’t take much to build and I think it would be very livable.” Initially the cabin concept represented a separate building, possibly a vacation cabin. In reality it became the beginnings of the large, Gresham house. It is the south end of the house, built first and used temporarily while working on the larger structure. Of the larger design decisions articulated in 1944 only the exterior finish (white stucco), and the roof (tile), were clearly abandoned.
The existing 1944 letters associated with the design predate the worst of Charles’ war experiences, the battle of Okinawa, but the strategy of focusing the serviceman on the future worked to get him through the war. He arrived in Gresham in 1946 with a little money, sketches on paper, plans in his head, malaria, difficult war memories, and a few hand tools, ready to build.
INFLUENCES:
In 1933, after touring in the midwest playing trumpet with a Jazz band and with a Union Pacific railroad pass in his pocket, Charles visited Chicago to hear other bands. He attended the Chicago World’s Fair which featured the exhibition “The Homes of Tomorrow.” It included Howard T. Fisher’s General House, Inc. a flat roofed factory produced house with corner windows very familiar to the later Gresham design.
During the war Charles was stationed at different forts and some undisclosed locations. When possible Charles would reside with Fae who, in an effort to be near to him, rented houses across the country. They both were exposed to modern architecture in Washington, Oregon, California including San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Texas. One surprising letter in 1945 has Charles in France for a very brief time.
The working design in the closing days of 1944 has a patio and front elevation much like the one built later but also includes a tile roof. One can imagine the tile roof being witnessed repeatedly in Charles’ and Fae’s experiences in California and Texas. In describing the patio drawing on December 4th, 1944, Charlie admits “I have never mentioned the deck I have had in mind all the time. I still don’t know for sure how it will work out but I have shown it here with a vertical ladder.” This deck is on the roof and is the first suggestion of the flat roof.
Charles regarded an officer named “Gately,” who was on the ship with him, as a design professional. F. R. Gately also did nude pinup art for the men. Although they played cards together and Charles would have appreciated the help there is no evidence that Gately had any influence over the design of the house.
Charles and Fae owned Tomorrow’s House, by Nelson and Wright, published in 1945. Their copy has a materials take off list in pencil on the inside cover. Their clever door-less side hall of the back hall and den appears on page 146 of that book. Their “three-passenger bath” in the back wing is described on page 104, and pictures of their original double sink are shown in illustration 112. The curvilinear lavatory cabinet made of half round molding appears in illustration 110, and a wall of glass block in illustration 105. Their pedestal dining room table bolted through the brick floor structure is shown in picture 144 and also appears in House Beautiful.
Fae had a subscription to House Beautiful for decades. Her copies from the war years do not survive but the influence of the articles and advertisements appear unmistakable. In 1945 the Hotpoint appliance ad features a kitchen design that largely parallels Fae’s original kitchen; another ad features Thermopane windows installed above the breakfast nook. In addition, a home design piece in the magazine the same year shows a photo of board and bat siding, an article about recreation features a shuffleboard floor created in tile, and a piece about garages recommends making storage use of the space above the nose of one’s garaged automobile. The notions of a sliding-glass wall to a patio and the outside and a brick barbecue also appear in that magazine.
The flat roof is common in Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, is pictured repeatedly and described in Tomorrow’s House and appears regularly in articles in House Beautiful. A specific article in House Beautiful features a house by architect William Deknatel, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, showing the overhang specifically as it relates to a “solar house.” A picture of a beach house by Donald Kirby architect, explicitly shows how to transform an International Style “box” into a Flat Roof Contemporary Modern “beauty.” “The resulting shadows create good scale.”
The overhang that is reduced to only the structural members can be found four times in Tomorrow’s House and is pictured repeatedly in Homes and Sunset Western Ranch House illustrates it once. At Falling Water it is thought of as a trellis but at Pope-Leighly it would appear to be a design to allow more light into the windows below. In the Charles and Fae Olson Residence all the white paint in the open work greatly illuminates the corner window area when the sun is shining as would “Tomorrows House” illustration 213.
The sunken living room is not common in House Beautiful, but does appear in a picture illustrating interior decoration. Wright’s Pope-Leighey Usonian house has a living room lower than the front entrance. After 1944, when the concept was clearly already in Charles’ living room design, it appeared often in publications. Cliff May’s sunken living room was published in Sunset Western Ranch Houses in 1946, and the sunken living room appears seven times in Homes.
Indirect lighting is prominent in the Olson Residence and is pictured once in Tomorrow’s House. Indirect lighting is considered one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s inventions, which lends support to Charles’ comment that he studied books on the architect. Cliff May’s design of a living room in the chapter, “Possibilities of a Ranch House,” shows great potential for indirect lighting on the scale of the Charles and Fae Olson Residence, but it is not mentioned in the text.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonion ideas of one construction having two finished sides, is used on the workshop walls and red floor, both fireplaces, the dining room glass wall and the entire exterior wall of the playroom. Wright was also an advocate of built-ins and an advocate of owner-built housing.
OWNER DESIGNER:
Charles had not ruled out an architect when he wrote “Architect’s rates are high but their advice is worth it in materials they can save in the basic construction.” “I realize that there are probably many changes that might have to be made when it comes to drawing up the plans.” For Charles, the site was picked for his design. “It would be best on top of a raise where the ground could fall off quite abruptly in the front of the house”, and he designed specifically for the children he expected Charles made a few more sketches that were not folded to fit an envelope and in the end there were no professional drawings.
OWNER CONTRACTOR:
Charles was less intimidated about his lack of knowledge as a builder. He leaned on his brother-in-law, Jim Almond, a local builder, for advice. They owned a few tools jointly, Charles borrowed many more, and Charles purchased Jim’s and his crew’s labor on the occasion of the major concrete pour. Otherwise the house was going to be as good as Charles’ ability to make it. Fae was important for support, but her opinions in terms of quality control were impressive. The parts of the house she did not inspect were of an entirely different nature than those she did. Fae did not physically work on the project but the children did. The five children all learned basic building skills and were important conveyers of materials. As young adults they were encouraged to be involved in design decisions and the finishing of bedrooms. The energy given to this project was great, especially in the early years. Neither Charles nor Jim Almond were working to build a house the way the “merchant builders” were. The efficiencies developed in the suburban mass production of housing would never have involved a cross cut saw for felling trees, a portable mixer for concrete, or on site creation of windows and doors. The on-site labor costs for the Charles and Fae Olson Residence would have been truly alarming except that most of the labor was unpaid. A building this complicated could never have been produced cheaply no matter how many were made. This building was running in the opposite direction from the mass market and although it is doing exactly what the design concepts and the magazine articles of the time suggested, few buildings were made using the methods and technologies of this builder.
PROCESS
The purchase of six acres of forested hillside was cheaper than a standard suburban lot of the time, because the hillside did not have city services and made an unusual building site not likely to have been approved for a loan. The trees, a resource to Charles and Fae, were felled using a crosscut saw, and picked up by the sawmill at Pleasant Home. Charles hired a bulldozer to establish the two terraces the house was built on before the lumber returned from the mill. The house was started at the south end in the summer of 1946, and the family moved into the beginnings of the back hall and adjacent rooms that fall. This two-story portion contained a temporary kitchen and a temporary storage cabinet divided off a temporary children’s bedroom. The parents slept upstairs before the stair was installed and accessed the unfinished bedroom from the outside on a plank. The living room was located in the den entered beside the chimney where the later stair was constructed. The compartmental bath and the temporary kitchen were finished first. The temporary kitchen was abandoned in 1949, but the unusual bath served alone successfully for fourteen years. The interiors of the remaining rooms off the back hall were completed before the framing of the rest of the house. In 1947, a hand poured concrete foundation was placed and the remainder of the house was framed and roofed by the fall of 1947. The kitchen and dining room were occupied in 1949. The living room fireplace was built in 1950 and the furnace was installed. The basement playroom served as a temporary living room and temporary bedroom after 1951. The basement laundry was finished in 1952. The living room was completed in 1954. The bedroom above the workshop was completed by 1957. The southwest bedroom was finished in 1959. The adjoining bath was completed in 1962, the master bedroom in 1963 and the basement bedroom in 1965.
MATERIALS:
Cement was in short supply in 1946 and hollow clay tile and slacked lime served to create the back foundation. A major brick manufacture, Columbia Brick Works, was located within a mile of the house and sand came from the Sandy River. The common brick purchased in the first years were a standard at the brickyard and made throughout the years of construction. For consistency, these red brick were used even after the availability of Roman brick in the 1950’s. Few houses were constructed in 1946 because of shortages in materials. A number of the hollow clay tiles were deformed “clinkers” that were used under the house. Medium sized river rock was also used for footings to compensate for a lack of building materials. Windows were purchased in 1946 for the back section and the dining room. The dining room window was stored in the south wall of the two-story section before the dining room was framed. This window was likely not custom-made for the house but rather the house was custom- made to fit a purchasable window. Purchase of a new Craftsman jointer in the spring of 1949, made further purchase of manufactured windows unnecessary. When the window for the dining room was installed in the dining room, site-made windows were installed in the workshop to replace it. The dining room window was framed outside of the adjoining wall and likely was thought of as a “glazed sliding wall” before the fragility of the window purchase was assessed. By the time the rest of the house was enclosed and occupied, when access through the dining room window was considered, the manufactured sliding glass door then available was obviously a more practical solution.
The Vanport flood in 1948 made it possible to acquire oak flooring as flood lumber. This flooring was used in all the rooms finished after 1949, except the basement bedroom. The history of finishing the rooms over time is most obvious in the ceilings where datable changes in the ceiling tile industry can be followed between 1946 and 1949. A purchase of eight inch milled tongue-and-groove pine with a large quirk and bead was used in the living room and upper bedroom ceilings and sheetrock was used in the 1960’s. Aluminum storm windows were purchased and installed, in a group, for the back hall rooms, the living rooms and the southwest bedroom in 1959. Hardware changed over time, and variations could not always be avoided. The chrome striated hardware of the back hall and bath is replaced by brass hardware in the period 1949 through 1954, Hanging sliding hardware can be found in the closets of the 1960’s. Doors and hardware are generally avoided throughout. The blue fixtures of the second bathroom were purchased in 1952 and stored for years in their wooden crates. The beams in the living room were finished by burning with a blow torch and the ash removed with a wire brush. This technique was revisited in 1965 in the basement bedroom for all the woodwork.
BUILT-INS:
Charles made the furniture in the early years to save money. Built-ins saved him time because he did not have to finish the side or back. This do it yourself attitude ran counter to the growing pains the rest of the nation was having. Some architects and the building community were trying to get parts or whole houses made in a factory to reduce cost. “Factory prefabricated or developer mass produced houses would always be less expensive than those designed by an architect.” The Ranch house, which adopted many contemporary modern concepts, was the solution to reducing on-site costs. “That advantage was overwhelmed by too many built-ins”. Built-ins were a design efficiency of space, not a cost effective way to mass produce furniture. But if the builder’s site time was not considered, the most inexpensive solution was site built built-ins.
CONCLUSION:
The Olson Residence is eligible for listing in the National Register of historic Places under Criterion A as an imposing example of a contemporary/modern-style dream house designed by the veteran and his wife during World War II, and hand-built for their own family following the War. The house is unusual in having supporting documentation in the form of letters that establish the designer’s thoughts that led to the creation. These letters definitely link the design to specific dates during the war and to the architectural ideas of the time. The design is directly influenced, just before it is commenced, by the important book Tomorrow’s House, and the building documents the difficulties of building in 1946. Although the style and size were a common dream, they are unusual because neither fits the economics of the post war housing and banking industries. The structure only exists because Charles and his family built it themselves; the processes used to bring the dream into reality were often singular and always resourceful. The unique design is good architecture: it inspires, conforms to its site, and accommodated its original occupants for sixty years. The structure is stable, and remains intact, in the setting in which it sprung. |
