Have you ever stood at your kitchen sink and paid attention to something other than what’s in that sink? Believe it or not, the question of whether or not a person had the ability to gaze out the window while washing up, dishes or otherwise, became a really hot topic in Los Alamos sometime around 1947.
By January of 1946 there was a firm agreement among the “powers that be” that Los Alamos was going to become a permanent facility. There were multiple opinions regarding what, exactly, the identity of that facility would be. But Los Alamos was deemed necessary and that meant transitioning the town from what amounted to a giant hodgepodge collection of temporary housing, trailers, huts (yes, they were called hutments!), and old ranch school buildings, into a viable town with real housing for scientists, support staff, and their growing families.
The first place tagged for Los Alamos expansion was the Western Area. It seemed logical mostly because the land was already clear and flat-ish. “Ish” because the natural mountain meadow of Western Area had been the town golf course and horse pasture for years. The other thing that made it desirable was the probability of getting utilities over there without having to jump a canyon in order to do so.
Community planner Lawrence B Sheridan was commissioned to design a neighborhood. It was the height of modernity with the big horseshoe main drag and swooping side streets ending in quiet cul-de-sacs. Pictured below during construction, Western Area was supposed to be the answer to the housing crisis in Los Alamos. By 1947, there were more than a few barriers between dreams and reality.
The building contract was won by a company called McKee. The builder came up with two different models. One was concrete block covered in stucco and the other was wood frame with siding. Since there were no streets in the Western Area at the time these sample homes were built, the homes went up on Spruce Street. The Army Commander in charge at that time crowed that “Every home will have a bathtub!” While that was true, there was a laundry list of other things that worried potential occupants.
A women’s organization called the Mesa Club actually made a detailed list of improvements they felt necessary to render the model homes liveable. The list was detailed because one of the complaints was that the linen closet was not deep enough to adequately accommodate a set of folded sheets. Other items of complaint were that the windows were not set as to encourage a cross breeze, the windows in the children’s rooms were too high, and the major complaint was that the kitchen sink was placed in such a way that it faced a blank wall. After all, whoever heard of a kitchen sink that didn’t have a window over it?
If you’ve ever lived in a modern apartment complex you might have had more than a few kitchens without any windows at all. Of course, what the Mesa Club wasn’t grasping was that an optimal way to cut construction costs was to place the kitchen sink near the same wall that housed the plumbing for the bathroom. The Commander scoffed at the ladies’ complaints and told them there was no call for building “custom type houses”. After all, the last housing actually built in Los Alamos were the Sundt Apartments. (If you don’t know what a Sundt is, I’m planning a post about these fascinating apartments later on.) For a cost comparison, a Sundt Apartment building that housed up to four families cost $3000 to build. Each single family home or half duplex in the Western Area project carried a price tag of $14000!
But the ladies of the Mesa Club weren’t about to drop the topic of the kitchen sink. They rallied their husbands, a good number of them prominent Laboratory employees. 30 of the Laboratory’s top scientists put their signatures on a letter which was sent to Washington DC. The letter cited more than one issue with the housing options planned for the Western Area. Houses had only gone up on 41st and 42nd Streets before a task force was assigned to come out here to Los Alamos to see what all the fuss was about. Yes. A task force was called out over the kitchen sink… The next time you think you have a housing issue here in Los Alamos, just remind yourself of kitchen sinks and laugh.
Needless to say, the kitchen sink was indeed moved. Because of this, for quite some time there were half a dozen houses on 41st and 42nd Streets that had the kitchen sink in the original position. It’s a safe bet that these have undergone plenty of renovations over the years. But sometimes I am just a bit curious to know if there are still homes in the Western Area with the kitchen sink facing a blank wall.
One of the most luxurious features was the third bedroom available in more than one version of the Western Area homes. To families who had been sleeping in cramped quarters for quite some time, it probably felt huge! Still, homes were assigned based upon family size. To merit a three bedroom home, you needed to be a family of at least five people. And while there was a bathtub in every house, a good number of these homes did not come with a shower. Believe it or not, tub and shower combos were not considered “standard” until well into the eighties.
Construction on Western Area continued once the initial complaints were addressed. Construction began at the intersection of Trinity and Diamond Drives and went around the horseshoe expanding first to the West, then the North, and then East. This created a bizarre situation for some families. Because of construction traffic, if you were assigned a house on the Northern side of the horseshoe, you got to move in last even though your home had been finished for months!
Because of the delays in building the Western Area, and the housing crunch in general, there were several other short term housing options brought in to fill the gap. Last week I blogged about the Denver Steels – or Denver Metals. If you missed that post, click here. There were a few other short term options that I’ll talk about in future posts. But until then, don’t forget to pick up Craig Martin’s book about Los Alamos housing. Some of the information is bound to make the pieces of our housing history click into place! You can purchase Quads, Duplexes, and Sunken Living Rooms here. And when you’re ready to go in search of your own Dream Home in Los Alamos, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you!
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