Paper Presented at NCPH Conference       About Us

Educational Resources   Suggested Reading   Links

In February of 1948, John and Agnes Tevlin, and their 6 month-old son Jack, moved into a two bedroom house in Levittown, New York with much excitement. John had been in the armed services, and when he returned from overseas after the war, he and Agnes had moved in with John’s parents in Manhattan. Agnes described the living arrangements as "a terrible three room apartment, we were all squeezed in together." After Jack was born in July of 1947, the Tevlins started to seriously chafe at their living conditions, but where could they go? Thousands of young couples in similar straights were all competing for a few tiny apartments, as Agnes said "we were dying to get out of there, but you couldn’t find any place of your own, not even a little apartment."

To the Tevlins, Levittown was more than just a breath of fresh air in the suburbs. To them, Levittown was their first space of their own as a couple. They began by renting a two bedroom house in the neighborhood, and were some of the earliest tenants in the now-famous subdivision. Agnes described her living situation like this:

John rode in to New York City each day for his job as a textile buyer for a men’s suit maker with a neighbor, as he still didn’t (and never did) obtain a driver’s license. Agnes, however, relished the independence that driving would bring to her and immediately took driving lessons and got her license. Her sister lived just down the street with husband and baby girl, and Agnes would borrow their car to make trips to the grocery store and run errands with young Jack. A few years later, the Tevlin’s moved to another new neighborhood development in nearby Hicksville, New York, because they needed a house with more room.

The Tevlin’s, like millions of families all over the U.S. in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s were both pushed and pulled into the burgeoning post-W.W.II subdivision boom. The growth of post-war suburbia was a marriage of demand and desire. After the war the marriage rate doubled, but in 1948, over 2 million couples were still living with relatives. Veterans Administration loans coupled with Federal Housing Administration mortgage programs made the financing easy, but the demand for ready-to-live in housing was immediate. This housing boom is reflected in the inexpensive materials, simple design, and quick construction of the Ranch Style house.

The case study presented in this paper, illustrating the working- and middle-class suburban ranch house boom of Tempe, Arizona, is but one example of an almost universal post-W.W.II phenomenon in the U.S. This paper will discuss thematically only a portion of the myriad of factors that facilitated and financed the housing boom and motivated the choice of millions of people to move to the suburbs. Specifically I will address how this complex relationship was played out in development and settlement of nine Ranch-style architecture subdivisions in Tempe, Arizona during the late 1940s and early 1950s, as researched by myself and my colleagues Michelle Bayes, Kristen Cecchi, Emily Neilan, Laura Purcell, and Kirsten Winter while we were graduate students at Arizona State University in the winter of 1997-1998. We selected nine subdivisions that were platted in the City of Tempe (which is just east of Phoenix, Arizona) between 1945 and 1950 to trace the historical and architectural contexts of the subdivisions, and to evaluate their potential for preservation under the current National Register of Historic Places guidelines for historic districts. These issues have most recently been addressed in the 1998 "Context and Guidelines for Evaluating America’s Historic Suburbs for the National Register of Historic Places," by David Ames of the University of Delaware and in the 1995 and 2000 "Preserving the Recent Past" conferences which I am sure many of you attended (how many?)

Of course, suburban development did not just start after World War II. Ex-urban growth had been established and entrenched well in advance of 1945. Before the freeway suburbs of the 1940s and 1950s sprang up all over the country, there were the automobile suburbs of the 1920s through 1940s, the streetcar suburbs of the 1880s through the turn of the century, and the railroad and horsecar suburbs prior to those. Waging an ongoing battle that I do not wish to dwell on in this paper are the adamant critics of sprawl on one side, and on the other, revisionist historians who describe the suburb as a typology no more inseparable from the American lifestyle than baseball and apple pie. I think somewhere in the middle is a post-urban interpretation that is especially suited for the discussion of post-war subdivisions of the North American West, such as those found in and around Los Angeles, Calgary, Denver, Seattle, and Phoenix, including the subdivisions we studied in Tempe. But, first, let's try to place the phenomenon within the context of the post-war experience.

In 1945, six million returning veterans, eager to start new families, faced a housing crisis. Between 1944 and 1946, single-family housing starts increased from 114,000 to 937,000, an eight-fold growth. But even this mini-boom could not keep up with the demand; new households still formed faster than new houses were being built. The supply began to catch up with the demand beginning in 1949 and by 1950, 1.69 million single-family houses were built. Additionally, significant changes in how developers became involved in housing speculation were influenced by funding mechanisms of the FHA. Instead of home owners buying the land and finding a builder, FHA-funded developers constructed housing for a speculative market, and in most cases recouped investments within a few short years.

The U.S. is now basically a suburban, rather than a rural or urban nation, as a result of these trends. Between 1940 and 1949, suburbs grew by 36 percent, while what are considered "core" cities only expanded by an average of 14 percent. This gap between urban and suburban growth was further escalated during the 1950’s when core cities gained another 6 million residents, but suburbs gained 19 million new residents. During the 1950’s, 1.2 million citizens were moving to the suburbs every year. These figures reflect also the decline in populations of rural communities. More people lived in suburbs than in the central city in 1960, and by 1990 most U.S. citizens lived in suburbs.

Tempe exemplified migration pattern to the sunbelt cities after W.W.II. Nestled six miles to the southeast of Arizona’s capitol city, Phoenix, Tempe proudly proclaimed itself to be "the #1 suburban residential town in the Valley of the Sun and Arizona." Many soldiers, having been stationed in the South and Southwest prior to and during their involvement with the military, came to enjoy the warm weather and casual lifestyle of the sunbelt. Technological advances, such as the development of inexpensive home air conditioning units, which by the 1950s were a omnipresent aspect of home development in the desert Southwest, made desert living appealing, even in the summer. Tempe certainly emphasized the climate in it’s promotion of life in Arizona, extolling the virtues of the "glorious winter climate," "joyous comfortable, sane living" and "beautiful cloudless starlight nights," among other benefits. 1940s Chamber of Commerce advertisements for Tempe pointed to easy living in "new residential subdivisions, with paved streets, city water, natural gas, electricity, and abundant cheap irrigation water for lawns and gardens" provided by canal systems built to provide water for war-time technology industries and agriculture during the war. The pitch apparently worked; population in Tempe burgeoned from 2,906 in the 1940 census to 7,680 in 1950. By 1950, Tempe was the seventh largest city in Arizona. Between 1945 and 1960, the population of the state overall more than doubled. (see a graph of Tempe's population growth from 1940 - 1960)

Like the Tevlins’ experience in Levittown, veterans who were looking for housing in suburban Tempe were aided by Veterans Administration (VA) loans which guaranteed access to $2,000 for returning soldiers to start a new business or to buy a home. With 80 to 90% of the housing cost financed through the VA, a veteran could easily afford a home in Levittown for between $7,990 and $9,500 in the late 1940s. Similar new homes in Tempe cost between $7,000 and $10,000. The GI bill also provided tuition to technical schools or for university education. The GI bill itself had its roots in Arizona, originating with and being actively promoted by Arizona Senator Ernest McFarland, who had also been instrumental in having several large military installations built in Arizona shortly before and during U.S. involvement in W.W.II. The Valley of the Sun air bases, training fields, and a naval air station, not to mention the dozens of military contractors and research and development firms supporting these installations, prospered through the Cold War era. Although it is difficult to determine how many residents in the nine subdivisions we studied were beneficiaries of veterans programs, there is some indication that many of the residents were at least nominally involved in the military. For example, Herbert Turner, a Master Sergeant at Williams Air Force Base owned a home in State College Homes subdivision in 1949, and John Martin, an ROTC instructor rented a home in the neighborhood in 1952. Workers from the military AiResearch installation lived in the Hu-Esta Park subdivision in the early 1950s.

Arizona State College (now called Arizona State University) directly benefited from the GI Bill and the favors bestowed upon large universities by the federal government. The impact on ASC after the war was immediate: between Fall semester of 1945 and Spring of 1946, enrollment jumped from 553 to 1,163 students. By the next semester, enrollment had almost doubled again over the previous semester. By 1956, ASC had an enrollment of 6,400 students, and included 540 faculty and staff on the payroll. The College was the single largest employer in Tempe during this time period, significantly changed primarily from being a teacher's college to a research and development-driven university. Several of the neighborhoods we studied illustrated direct links to the collegiate setting. One subdivision’s name, State College Homes, implied a strong connection to the school, and in fact, many of the residents of the subdivision were students, staff or faculty at the university. Orion W. Judd, who platted the subdivision in 1946, was the chief heating plant engineer at ASC from 1938 until illness forced his retirement in 1947. In College View subdivision, also proximitively-named, an average of four students owned or rented houses each year in the early 1950s, and several ASC professors made College View their home. In the Val Verde subdivision (plat 4), an ASC janitor, campus police officer, and carpenter all lived in the neighborhood in the 1950s.

However, the subdivisions we studied in Tempe primarily housed the people who supplied the mechanisms for growth in the community. The Orth subdivision, for example, was not a community entirely dependent upon the university or the military complex. The majority of the occupations of the residents directly supported residential construction and development of the area, including: electrician machinist, cabinet maker, plasterer, carpenter, truck driver, roofer, and painter. Mechanics, service station attendants, small business owners, postal workers, bookkeepers, clerks, store managers, and bartenders owned homes in the various Val Verde plots and in Roosevelt Addition. A widow who lived in Vista Del Rio subdivision worked as a waitress at Lola’s Cafe in Tempe, and Ruth Hollis of the Roosevelt Addition operated "Ruth’s Beauty" salon. By 1960, in support of the baby boom, two households in the Val Verde subdivisions ran nurseries in their residences, The Happy Time Day Nursery & Kindergarten and the Babyland Nursery. The American Dream, of owning one’s home in the suburbs, well away from the hassle and dangers of the city, so well articulated in John Stilgoe’s Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939, was infinitely attainable to working class Tempeans, as much as it was to their middle-class neighbors.

Also, these subdivisions illustrated the multi-cultural nature of settlement in Tempe. Many Hispanic families moved to Tempe and the Valley of the Sun looking for work during and after W.W.II. Hispanic members of the community had had a strong influence in agriculture for generations in the Valley, but post-war Hispanic residents of Tempe also were skilled trades-people who supported the construction boom of the period, and were painters, plasterers, and construction workers. By 1955, about 50% of the residents in Orth subdivision had Spanish surnames.

The automobile also contributed significantly to suburban growth nationally, but particularly in the American West. In the 1930s, city planners devoted a large portion of the traffic planning effort to suburban highway construction, and few challenged the dominance of the automobile as the primary mode of transportation to the outlying suburbs. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, a General Motors-sponsored "Futurama" exhibit illustrated a metropolitan system of high-speed highways connecting suburbs to downtowns and other suburbs with radial access highways. With the approval of the Highways Act of 1956, which gave billions for the construction of over 41,000 miles of highway, the hub-and-wheel expansion of highway growth was entrenched. The suburb and the automobile became physically and ideologically inseparable. In a grand example of circular expansion, automobiles allowed for suburban growth without the demands of an infra-structure of mass transit, while at the same time guaranteeing that suburbanites would be dependent upon the automobile for their existence. As one humorist noted, a woman’s life in the suburbs was "motherhood on wheels--[delivering children] obstetrically once, and by car forever after."

The subdivisions in our study represent this co-dependent relationship with the automobile. Most of the subdivisions follow the city’s gridiron pattern, with the exception of a few which end in cul-de-sacs. Traffic circulation is overall two-way automobile oriented, with only a few of the subdivisions containing sidewalks. Homes built in the subdivisions have one-car carports as a rule, with automobile access on the edge of the lot line in to the carport. City advertisements frequently mention the presence of Tempe’s "paved streets," and the city’s "ideal location on Highways 60, 70, 80, and 89," underlying the importance of this aspect to prospective residents.

The Ranch-style home is also a reflection of the aforementioned themes: high demand for housing, unprecedented mechanisms for funding housing development, financial incentives for home ownership, and widespread automobile ownership. The Ranch could be quickly and inexpensively constructed, and emphasized the increasing status of the automobile.

The Ranch Era (1935-1960) departed from earlier architectural periods in many respects. As mentioned earlier, speculative housing development became more popular. Construction styles reflected the immediate demand for housing combined with technological innovations available during the post-war period. Ranch style architecture did not require a basement or sub-floor foundation, which can be difficult and time-consuming to excavate in the caliche-laden desert strata. Rather, construction was footed on a concrete slab. This revolution in design speeded construction and was cost-efficient. Construction materials included traditional wood frame or brick, and often incorporated the new building technology of the slump or concrete block wall.

Ranch-style house designs emphasized the status of the home owner by highlighting the length of the building across the lot, and with the facade directly facing the street; instead of placing the home in a square, or multi-storied plan, or down the length of the lot. Moreover, the role of the automobile was enshrined in Ranch-style construction, with one- or two-car carports extending the "sprawling" design of the house even further across the lot, emphasizing vehicle ownership to passer-by and reiterating the suburban reliance upon the automobile.

The visual context of the neighborhoods is enhanced by the large trees and mature vegetation visible throughout the area. Short-shorn Bermuda grass lawns are highlighted with shrubs, low-growing flowering plants, and large trees (salt cedar, pine, willow, olive, and various palm varieties predominate). In general, lots are separated in the back and side yards with chain-link, wood, or concrete block wall fences. As is typical in Arizona, fences vary from three to six feet in height, and are gated for access to service alleys behind each lot.

With a few notable exceptions, such as the National Folk-style O. W. Judd house constructed in 1893, which became surrounded by the State College Homes subdivision, and two bungalow-style houses built in the 1930s in the College View Subdivision, the vast majority of the 238 properties evaluated in the 9-subdivision survey area were highly representative of the Ranch Era.

What is a typical Ranch house? Maybe we should ask what makes a ranch house special? In Tempe, as in the Valley of the Sun in general, the ranch house became an instrument for infinite variation of form, design, and craftsmanship. In abundance are early ranch houses, which illustrate the class one-story, box-like form with an L-shaped plan. Usually, these early ranch houses have a low-pitched gable or hip roof, with a small, wood columned porch. Builders almost uniformly utilized metal-framed casement-type windows, sometimes adding corner windows or shutters.

The very popular California Ranch, also called "the Rambler" echoed the popularity of all things Western and West-coast with Americans during the 1950s. Based upon actual working-ranch prototypes, the California Ranch provided the family with a convenient, flexible, and efficient floor plan. The asymmetrical front facade, with either a linear or L-shaped plan always featured a low-pitched gable or hip roof. Often the Rambler’s scale echoed the larger square-footage of the residence, and an attached garage (instead of a carport) further denoted the status of the owner. The subdivisions in our study area had few California Ranches, however, often small transitional ranch houses were cleverly re-styled to look more "ranch-like," by adding wood shake roofs, and enclosing carports. This style, which was immediately popular in Arizona, was promoted in annual plan books by architect Clifford May in Sunset Magazine for more than two decades.

The Transitional Ranch and longer, lower, California Ranch took on characteristics of the revival periods, as well. Several homes in the study area reflected French Provincial Ranch influences, which are identified more by form than ornamentation. Detailing from French domestic architecture, such as hip roofs, window dormers, and shuttered, small multi-paned picture windows can be seen in these houses. Multiple hip roofs were popular, and rooflines were slightly higher pitched their low-pitched Ranch neighbors, further highlighting this "French" detailing.

The American Colonial influence can also be seen in many Tempe Ranch-style homes. Colonial decor never seems to lose its popularity in the U.S., even when people try to lift decorative elements from tall, stately, eighteenth-century New England buildings and apply them to low, horizontally-oriented Ranch houses. The result is roof forms trimmed with classical moldings, doorways with Federal or Greek Revival surrounds, and windows featuring small-paned sashes and shutters. And of course, painted white, to further identify with Colonial elegance.

More in keeping with the climate and cultural influences of southern Arizona, Spanish Colonial influences are very common on ranch-style houses built in the period we studied. These are truly Spanish-influenced Ranch houses and not actual Spanish Colonial architecture, as can be seen with the underlying ranch "body" and plan of the homes. Modest details include tiled roofs, white stuccoed walls, exposed rafter tails, and particularly, roman arches or flat-topped openings. As Tempe Preservation Specialist Mark Vinson has noted, often Spanish Colonial modifications to ranch houses indicates Hispanic cultural influences, and is an important indicator of cultural continuity and change in the Mexican-American vernacular landscape of cities such as Tempe.

But what to do with all of these Ranch houses, these many manifestations of a similar form, intended to serve a requisite function: to house as many as possible, as inexpensively as possible, while still providing the American Dream in a recognizable and pleasant container? At a recent National Park Service conference in Santa Fe where many of these questions arose, a participant argued that including mass-produced commercial and residential architecture on the National Register would be "preserving mediocrity", to which the Keeper of the Register replied with a smile, "you just don’t like modern architecture." It is not surprising that the same vanguard who fought for the preservation of the previously dismissed as "ugly" and "overly ornamental" Victorian homes in the face of "suburban sprawl" now questions the self-imposed hypocrisy of defending said sprawl. Nonetheless, this is the architecture of the war veteran, the working class carpenter who constructed housing for millions possible when the need was the greatest. This is the type of property that previous generations of preservationists have missed the opportunity to save the best examples of-- the shot gun house, the tenement-- often after they have gone. Further, much of these early neighborhoods are no longer on the "outskirts" of town, but are part of the city infrastructure as surrounding areas are annexed and cities move steadily out to the perimeters of county lines and water jurisdictions. In the face of criticism of gentrifying neighborhoods out of the economic reach of the working class and lower-middle class inhabitants that traditionally that could afford to live in older housing, should we not make sure that a small sample of best and most representative aspects of the post-war boom, including blue-collar transitional ranch housing be preserved?

It seems that in many cities, post-war preservation is centered around the International Moderne movement houses, or the more "evocative" middle- and upper-middle class developments of the 20th century. This is not to say that the important Levittown’s haven’t been dutifully preserved. In Arizona, where much of the architecture of the state is of the 20th century, a large percentage of the Phoenix historic districts on the National Register are from the 1900-1940s. Western cities, in general, have moved quickly to preserve their recent past. However, very little documentation is in place to provide guidelines for evaluating the tens of thousands of post-war homes which become eligible of NRHP inclusion each year in Arizona. The State Historic Preservation Office issued a call for bids for a context study, which is still in the research phase and not expected to be done for years. Individual cities have made valiant attempts to include post-war subdivisions in city planning measures for local preservation efforts, the City of Phoenix Historic Homes of Phoenix: An Architectural and Preservation Guide published back in 1992 being the most comprehensive and accessible effort. At this point, the City of Tempe, based upon recommendations made in our 1998 report that serves as the basis for this paper, obtained funding for a contractor to write a context study, which is expected for review next year. At this date, however, Tempe does not have any historic districts listed on the National Register.

In December of 1997, forty-two out of 238 properties that we evaluated were potential contributors due to age, architectural integrity, and their direct correlation to the themes of Community Planning and Development and representative association with an Architectural style, the Early/Transitional Ranch House. From 1997 to this year, an average of ten homes per subdivision became eligible for inclusion due to age. For homes constructed after 1950, this figure significantly jumps, so that by 2008 all of the properties inventoried become eligible due to age. The problem exists, however, that many of these properties have already sustained "improvements" which significantly affect their eligibility as contributors due to architectural integrity. This situation only seems more grave as commercial expansion from the Mill Avenue and University commercial district continue to expand into what was once "suburbia". Due to the large percentage of properties in a well-defined and concise area, the City of Tempe has enormous potential to develop these neighborhoods into historic districts. Finally, a neighborhood education program in Historic Preservation should be instituted, so that interested residents may become advocates for their neighborhood’s preservation and raise the awareness of the community at large for their post-W.W.II cultural resources.

Endnotes