The U.S. Movement for Mass-Produced Concrete Housing, 1900 to 1924

This paper describes the birth, rise, and fall ofa movement that took the United States by storm during the 1900s and 1910s: the dream of mass-producing housing out of concrete. Thomas Edison played a key role in spreading this dream. Yet an overarching historical account will contextualise and relativise his well-known contribution amongst that ofother businesspeople and designers including Grosvenor Atterbury, John Conzelman, Frank Lambie, Milton Dana Morrill, Irving GUI, and Frank Lloyd Wright. They belonged to a vocal and active faction ofAmericans who, around 1910, proselytised a common message in favour ofserial concrete housing despite disagreeing on which building methods to use. World War I initially offered a major boost to their cause, but then turned into a missed opportunity that arguably provedfatal. However, -white the U.S. concrete-house movement undoubtedly trqfficked in hyperbole and overconßdent prophecies, evidence in this paper will counter the misperception that few concrete dwellings ever saw the light ofday there. The long-lasting effects ofthis movement transcended its premature end, notably by promulgating ideas about concrete and modern housing that would later become common currency around the world.