Exhibit at U.S. Natl. Building Museum: WWII & the American Dream

WORLD WAR II AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
How Wartime Building Changed A Nation
National Building Museum Washington, D.C. Nov 11, 1994 - Dec 31, 1995

On September 1, 1939, German forces marched into Poland and war broke out in Europe. In the United States there was the hope that America could stay out of the war. Then, when German forces defeated France in 1940 and Britain was under attack, it became increasingly clear the the United States could not maintain its official position of neutrality. The Army began a large-scale draft, the Navy prepared for a two-ocean war, and the government set into motion a building program of unprecedented scope.

This war time building program included a wide range of construction projects: military camps to train the aarmed forces, factories to produce munitions and military transport vehicles, government test facilities to develop military applications for technology, and housing for civilian defense workers. By the end of the war, the government had invested $23 billion in this massive undertaking.

Of course, a building effort of this magnitude both required and effected enourmous changes throughout the country--many of which are still felt today. Industrialists entered into lucrative partnerships with the government to construct and expand thousands of war plants. Architects and engineers came up with ingenious, practical solutions to wartime construction challanges. Manufactures created substitute material for those in short supply, while scientists devoted their research to the pursuit of war technologies. War workers migrated by the millions to areas offering defense industry jobs. People did without many consumer items--from refrigerators to automobiles--as production lines were converted to meet the needs of war.

Americans who endured both the Great Depression and the years of wartime sacrifice projected their hope and optimism on the American dream--how different, and how much better, life would be when the war was over. The war building program,with its innovation in technology and phenomenal levels of productivity, made the achievement of that dream a reality for millions.

WORLD WAR II AND THE AMERICAN DREAM presents the products of the war building program--from the Quonset hut to plexiglass to standardized housing in suburban Levittown-and explores the effects of war on the material dreams and aspirations of Americans.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

• The government instituted the nation's first peacetime draft in September 1940 and began to prepare troops for combat. At that time the Army's training camps could accommodate only 300,000. What made the biggest mobilization in American history possible was the large-scale use of mass-production techniques for the design and construction of training camp facilities.
• In 1941 a team of architects working for the Navy developed the Quonset hut, a metal mass-produced building that could be adapted to almost 100 different purposes-from barracks to hospitals and chapels. By 1945 more than 170,000 huts had been shipped around the world.
• At the outbreak of war in Europe, the United States was ill-prepared to play a major military role. By early 1941, however, 34 new munitions factories were under construction across the country, and by 1944 U.S. factories led the world in armaments production.
• Responding to fears of raids or invasions along the United States coasts the Navy expanded its blimp fleet to patrol the seas for submarines. To accommodate this expansion, th Navy built two blimp storage hangars with traditional steel trusses, but wartime metal shortages caused architects and engineers to develop an innovative hangar design using wood. Seventeen of these hangars were built. Measuring over 1,000 feet long, almost 300 feet wide, and 18 storied high, they are still the largest wood structures of their kind in the world.
• America's growing combat fleet required the construction of massive refueling facilities. The Red Hill fuel storage depot built in Oabu, Hawaii, was the largest of many Navy facilities constructed underground to decrease the risk of destruction by enemy fire. A hill was hollowed out to accommodate 20 domed cylindrical storage vaults 250 feet tall and 100 feet across, all connected by a series of tunnels. This super-secret tank form had a 6-million-barrel capacity.
• Construction of the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., began in September 1941. Within 16 month crews had completed the largest office building in the world, a 4 million-square-foot structure for 400,000 defense workers.
• The armed forces developed portable runways and hangars to enable Allied military aircraft to take off and land in recently conquered territory. Designed to be constructed quickly by unskilled labor using a minimum of equipment, these "instant" air bases were completely demountable and transportable by air.
• President Roosevelt's demand for new military aircraft forced factories to operate 24 hours a day. Some new plants were built as windowless blackout structures so that night shifts would not emit lights to attract enemy planes. As a result, fluorescent lighting, used sparsely in the 1930s, won widespread acceptance for its efficient, around-the-clock performances.
• Among the most imaginative wartime construction projects were camouflage schemes created to protect defense facilities from air attack. The scenic disguises could be quite extensive--in some cases, entire war plants were covered with canvas houses, fake trees, and camouflage netting to present the appearance of suburban subdivisions.
• Four California aircraft companies -- Douglas, Consolidated Vultee, Lockheed, and North American Aviation-- agreed in 1942 to finance the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel in Pasadena. The most technologically advanced facility of its kind, the tunnel was used to test model aircraft for vital aerodynamic data.
• Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser built Vanport, Oregon, in 1942 for workers at his nearby shipyards and their families. With men away in combat, women comprised a large portion of Vanport's population of 40,000, making up nearly a third of the construction force that built the city. Their around-the-clock shipyard jobs induced Kaiser to construct child-care centers--open 24 hours a day, every day.
• The largest single construction project of the war was the Manhattan project, the federal government's $2 bilion effort to create the atomic bomb. Led by the Army Corps of Engineers, the project involved building three top-secret cities. At one--Oak Ridge, Tennessee--the government spent $1 billion to house 47,000 workers and their families. Oak Ridge was developed to produce only a few pounds of uranium 235, an essential ingredient in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• The movement of more than 15 million Americans to war production centers resulted in the greatest internal migration in the nation's history. Between 1940 and 1944 more than 500,000 people moved to Los Amgeles, many of them to work in new aircraft plants on the city's outskirts. Devlopers built residential projects near these plants, hastening the decentralization of Los Angeles.
• A tri-level highway interchange, reportedly the nation's first, was built in 1942 near the Willow Run bomber plant outside Detroit to accommodate the thousands who commuted to work there.
• Shut out of defenses jobs in the South, 65,000 African Ameracans moved to Detroit, the largest defense producer in the nation. The construction of the government-funded Sojourner Truth defenses housing project created racial tensions that ultimately sparked a massive riot in 1943 in which 34 people died and 675 were injured.
• Leading modern aarchitects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, and Richard Neytra waere commissioned by the government to design defense housing communities. Their projects were among the first in American to feature elements of European modern design-flat roofs, large windows, and site plans that harmonized with the landscape.
• The largest private builder of housing communities in the eastern United States was Levitt and Sons. Before the war their specialty had been custom-built houses in affluent New York suburbs. Their wartime experience consstructing defense houses in Norfolk,Virginia, was success- fully applied to the famous postwar Levitowns in New York and Pennsylvania.
• Near the end of the war Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation hired industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss to develop various postwar reconversion projects. Dreyfuss's Convair Car was a flying automobile with a detachable wing and engine apparatus. It flew but never went into production. The Vultee house, designed in collabortion with architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, featured aluminum-clad walls patterned after the bulkheads of military aircraft.
• In 1944 the Beech Aircraft Company of Wichita, Kansas, agreed to collaborate with R. Buckminster Fuller to produce the designer's aluminum and plastic Dymaxion house. Beech hoped that it's employees' plane- manufacturing experience would transfer easily to the construction of the airframe-like house, although other problems prevented its mass-production
• The molded plywood chairs, tables, and screens introduced by Charles and Ray Eames in 1946 grew out of the wartime designs for molded plywood stretchers and leg splints that they developed for the U.S. Navy.
• The Lustron Corporation in 1948 began producing prefabricated steel houses in surplus wartime aircraft factory. Backed by a government loan, the company sought to capitalize on housing shortages. The enameled steel houses never needed painting and could be washed down with a garden hose. Approximately 2,500 Lustron houses were constucted before the company folded in 1950.
• During the war Zenith Plastics of Los Angeles used fiberglass to reinforce plastic on airplane radar domes. Intrigued by fiberglass technology, designers Charles and Ray Eames contacted Zenith,and together they developed the first one piece plastic chair whose surface was exposed rather than upholstered. In 1950 Zenith began mass-producing these still popular armchairs.

  ---

  WORLD WAR II AND THE AMERICAN DREAM grew out of interest by the Departmen t of Defense in studying and documenting the historical significance of troop barracks an other structures located on millitary reservations throughout the country. As the project developed, the focus of the exhibition was widened to encompass the entire wartime building program in order to explore the largest American construction effort on the occasion of the war's 50th anniversary. As the people of this country prepare to confront the challenges of a new millennium, the experience of World War II should help to remind us of waht we can accomplish as a united society of dedicated individuals. The buildings erected for war are indicative of both the achievement and the cost of this mammoth effort. In producing this exhibition, the National Building Museum fosters awareness of our rich building heritage. By reflecting on how the imperatives of war were expressed in physical structures, we can better understand the subtle and often unseen ways that our past influences our present lives.

WORLS WAR II AND THE AMERICAN DREAM is made possible by the Legacy Resource Management Program of the Department of Defense. Additional funding has been provided by the Martin Mariette Corporation, the College of Fellows of the American Institute of ARchitects,and the United States Gypsum Company. The National Building Museum also wishes to acknowledge the assiatance of the National Park Service.

THE EXHIBITION Guest Curator: Donald Albrecht
Priject Historian : Joel Davidson
Curatorial Assistanat: Hether Burnham
Exhibition Designers: Michael Sorkin Studio and Design Writing Research Lighting Designer: George Sexton Associates Exhibition Fabricator: R.H. Guest, Inc. Audio-visual Producers: merrick Communications Interpretive Exhibition Text Writers: Sharon Blume and Sharon Wyse. Brochure Designers: Design Writing Research

NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM

Chairman, Board of Trustees: Kent W. Colton President and Director: Susan Henshaw Jones 401 F Street N.W., Washington D.C. 20001 Metro Red Line (Judiciary Square Station) (202) 272-2448

Hours: Monday-Saturday 10am-4pm; Sunday 12-4pm.

[This announcement is an electronic version of the pamphlet distributed on the exhibit.]

[an error occurred while processing this directive]