T4L : from a house to a home

Creator

Manitowoc School of Vocational and Adult Education (Manitowoc, Wis.)

Date

• December 12, 1941

Publisher

[Manitowoc, Wisconsin]: Manitowoc Vocational School

Summary

• This article from the December 12, 1941 issue (vol. 21, no. 4) of the Manitowoc Vocational School's school paper "The Ship" describes a model house in Custerdale, a U.S. government defense housing project built in 1941 on the west side of Manitowoc to provide temporary homes for shipyard workers and other defense plant employees. The prefabricated single and double units were of very basic construction, with each unit consisting of a kitchen, living room, utility room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. The Manitowoc Vocational School's home furnishings class under the direction of Mrs. E. F. Ludwig was allotted Custerdale unit T4L to decorate as a model that would demonstrate how the houses could be attractively but inexpensively decorated. With the first 23 families having moved into Custerdale on November 1, the model home was opened for inspection on December 20, 1941. All 400 units in the first phase of Custerdale were soon occupied. In 1943 the government built twenty-seven multi-unit apartment buildings at the east end of Custerdale to provide accommodations for another 250 families of war plant workers.