Being in the Real Estate business, I hear so many things from buyers and sellers on what they feel makes a house a home. If you were to change up the geographical location, some folks might talk about a condo on a lake. Perhaps a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park in New York City. Maybe they want a tiny apartment in some far flung location like Livorno, Italy where buildings are literally perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Perhaps one of the most popular and longest lasting concepts of idyllic American life is the proverbial three bedroom, two bathroom house with a white picket fence, two children, two cars, and maybe a dog and a cat. Most of us grew up with this concept somewhere in our minds even though it’s certainly not the sort of place the cast of Sesame Street ever called home.
It shouldn’t be surprising then that one of the first and most often verbalized wishes of early Los Alamos residents was a desire for single family housing.
What many of us don’t realize is that the Ranch School Master Houses with their quaint log cabin looks and claw foot bathtubs weren’t used as single family housing during the war. Even Hans Bethe was sharing with physicist Edwin McMillan. The Arts & Crafts Cottage hosted Lt Col Whitney Ashbridge, Capt Gerald Tyler, A.L. Hughes, and Enrico Ferme at various times and sometimes more or less at once! These gentlemen occasionally had wives with them, but a good number of them were by themselves and sharing quarters while they worked sunup to sundown on the project of a lifetime.
The first single family homes in Los Alamos weren’t even intentionally created to satisfy the wishes of the residents. The project happened because of a sharp increase in personnel needed for the design of a plutonium implosion bomb in 1944. In July of that year, the Robert McKee Construction Company was contracted to bring in 100 prefabricated homes. The most readily available “houses” happened to be flat roofed units that resembled a box. Each building included small rooms in a basic layout that sat on blocks and weren’t even particularly airtight.
“McKeeville”, as it was soon called, was situated on seven city blocks that seemed to spring up overnight with absolutely no thought given to the landscape. Existing pinon and juniper trees were bulldozed to speed up construction. The location was essentially between Central Avenue and Canyon Road. Those city blocks no longer exist, but they would have been crammed into the area of present day Iris and Myrtle Streets. The houses were contracted in July 1944. By October of the same year they were ready and by Christmas they were full.
Once again, the residents of Los Alamos thought rather wistfully of the Sundt Apartments. When the Sundts had been built, the contractor had allowed the streets to flow with the natural landscape. Trees had been preserved. The neighborhoods seemed less “military” in looks and the buildings were sturdy and reliable.
In striking contrast, the McKee houses had cracks and crevices that did nothing to keep the dirt out. During the spring winds, furniture and appliances were coated with dust. Add the soot coming from the oil furnaces to the atmosphere in McKeeville and the entire neighborhood had a dingy, dirty feel to it. In short, they were a slight improvement on “Morganville“, but were most definitely not the sort of home you’d go out and purchase to live in on purpose.
Residents of McKeeville had a variety of complaints about the latest cheap housing brought in to ease the overcrowding in Los Alamos. Bedrooms were so small that a double bed took up the entirety of the floor space. The houses were so similar and the streets so uniform, that it was nearly impossible to tell one dwelling from another. Remember that streets were not labeled back in those days. One resident commented that she felt fortunate the McKee house she shared with her husband was located next to the laundry unit. She reported using the laundry building to help her find her way home each day.
On the upside of the whole situation was Robert McKee’s insistence that inexpensive maple furniture be included in each McKee house. While these furnishings were still considered substandard compared to what most people had in their homes, it was apparently an upgrade from what was called GI furniture used in Morganville and the other housing in Los Alamos.
Pause for a moment or two and chuckle about that. Have you tried to shop for real maple furniture these days? Evidently residents of McKeeville in 1945 would not have been impressed by the bargains we find at IKEA. I have to wonder to myself if this GI furniture might not be similar to the prefab things we tend to pick up at Walmart or Target. Oh, the irony!
As always, I want to tip my hat to Craig Martin’s field guide to housing in Los Alamos. I encourage you to purchase a copy from the Los Alamos Historical Society for yourself. If you have any interest in Los Alamos housing, this book is a wealth of information. Keep checking back in with my blog as we continue our tour through Los Alamos housing past, present, and even future! And when you’re ready to start hunting for your own Los Alamos housing, give me a call! I’d love to chat Los Alamos Real Estate with you.
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