One Standardized House for All: America's Little House

Abstract

The federal organization Better Homes in America built a model house in a conspicuous Midtown Manhattan location in 1934. Standing on the corner of 39th Street and Park Avenue, America's Little House drew daily crowds during its nearly one-year run. Better Homes leaders used the model house as an educational demonstration to illustrate how standardized components and methods could make home improvement easier and cheaper. Many of these ideas were inspired by Frederick W. Taylor's philosophy of scientific management, which was originally designed to make industrial work more efficient, but was broadly applied to other fields, including home improvement, during the interwar era. America's Little House was an important testing ground for the federal government, which assembled a team of experts in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscaping, and housekeeping to come up with universal plans that could be used to improve any house. In this way, Better Homes leaders challenged the conventional wisdom that the best houses were individualized ones, and they targeted more efficient domestic labor and consumerism as primary examples of the benefits associated with standardization. America's Little House demonstrated, for example, how women's household chores and purchases could be systematized in order to save time and money. For the Better Homes organization, standardized parts and procedures were more than just practical goals; they were democratic pursuits, undertaken with the belief that economical planning could make home improvement available to all.