This post was written by intern Leo Barron.
As World War II finally drew to a close in 1945, the City of Cambridge was faced with a daunting housing crisis that had been brewing for years. The start of the Great Depression in 1929 all but stopped the construction of housing in the city, and the four years of war from 1941 to 1945 meant that most of the money for infrastructure was directed towards military needs rather than the housing needs of Catabrigians. This general lack of construction grew to become a true crisis after the end of WWII. While the city’s population grew substantially in the interwar years–representing the beginnings of a housing shortage in Cambridge–the housing shortage reached a head when Cambridge veterans, many of whom were married and had children, returned to a city where housing options were scarce. This problem was only compounded by the new influx of students coming to MIT and Harvard for the fall semester. At Harvard, the freshman class numbered 1,645 students, more than double the size of the freshman class in 1945. It was this influx of people into the city after the war, many of them returning veterans, that forced the city to acknowledge–and attempt to ameliorate–the burgeoning housing crisis.
To manage the sheer number of families coming into Cambridge, the federal government, the city, and the two major universities worked in tandem to construct temporary veterans housing on some of the few undeveloped sites in the city. Now gone without a trace, these temporary housing structures were integral in preventing a housing catastrophe in the city, offering not only an experiment in public housing to the City of Cambridge, but also a potential short-term fix to the housing crises facing the nation in the 1940s and today.
By 1946, it was clear that the United States was in the midst of a housing crisis. Across the country, cities were feeling the brunt of their residents returning from the war as an influx of students attending university began using the funding offered to them under the GI Bill. To solve this crisis, government from the municipal to the federal level had to collaborate to ensure that those who had fought for their country abroad would not be left without a home once they set foot back in the United States.
The Lanham Act, passed in 1942, allowed cities to construct temporary structures for the war effort using military materials, but under the assumption that the local municipalities would bear the brunt of these costs. To amend the strain this act put on cities, Congress passed the Mead Resolution in 1945, which provided federal assistance to both cities and universities for the erection of temporary housing structures. The Cambridge city government, along with both Harvard and MIT, would make use of these new funds to ameliorate the housing crisis and get returning veterans housing as quickly as possible.
In January of 1946, Cambridge became the first city in New England to apply for temporary housing under the Mead Resolution, asking the federal government for 500 units to house veterans returning to the city. Though the federal government bore the responsibility of deconstructing military housing outside of the city and then reconstructing the housing in Cambridge, it was the city’s role to provide the sites for housing, extend utilities and streets to the housing units, and maintain these developments. After five years, the expectation was that these houses would be dismantled–a short fix to a problem that needed an immediate solution. Despite the city petitioning the Federal government for 500 units of housing, the city only received funds to construct 304 units across the city, enough units to house about a third of the 920 veterans in need.
Materials for the construction of these military barracks-style housing were brought down from a shipbuilding yard in South Portland, Maine by the federal government and erected on a number of sites across the city, including Russell Field, Haskell Street next to Rindge Field, Berkshire Street near Cambridge Field (now Donnelly Field), Concord Avenue next to the current National Guard building, and at smaller sites around the Cambridgeport and Riverside/Coast neighborhoods.
Placed across the city, these temporary housing units looked almost like modular homes, standing out against the backdrop of 19th and early 20th century cohesive housing. To expeditiously erect these structures, the city bypassed the zoning permitting process, allowing the Federal Public Housing Authority–a branch of the federal government–to erect these flammable structures within fire zones and thus saving the city from a bureaucratic nightmare.
Constructed using fiberboard panels and wooden supports that came in kits from the federal government, these modular structures came equipped with a kitchen attached to a living room. All units were available with one or two bedrooms and a bathroom. While these structures provided the basic necessities for veterans, most importantly shelter within the city limits, by September, veterans living in these temporary units were loudly voicing concerns about their new living situation. In surveys of veterans living in temporary units, the biggest complaint was the high cost of rent (40 dollars in 1946 is the equivalent of 644 dollars in 2024). Veterans believed it was unfair that they were required to pay so much for housing that was not even built to last more than five years and made sure the city knew their discontent. Additionally, the poor insulation of the units made the housing unlivable at times during the summer and winter months, with one veteran stating that the housing was akin to “igloos in the winter and blast furnaces in the summer.”
Despite the rapid speed at which Cambridge put up these temporary homes (by June of 1946, all 304 units had been allotted to veterans), the supply of housing still failed to match demand. By June, the waiting list for housing ballooned to over 1200, causing the city to still demand more housing from the federal government. However, due to the housing shortage across the country, the federal government refused to allot more housing units to Cambridge. Thus, the city turned to the universities, demanding that Harvard and MIT provide housing units for their own students to alleviate the stress on Cambridge veterans.
In the 1946 school year, Harvard expected over 10,000 enrollees, 6500 of them veterans and over 2500 of those veterans being married. At MIT, the number of enrollees grew substantially as well, and thus both universities also applied for temporary veterans housing of their own through the Mead Resolution. Cambridge was reliant on the two universities finding spaces for their married students to live quickly, but neither school moved at a speed desirable to Cambridge residents. In an article published by The Cambridge Chronicle titled “Colleges Fumble the Ball,” residents complained that over half of the housing shortage in the city is due to the sheer number of students moving into the city. They accuse the universities of failing to match the moment, pointing out that even a “little college in Rhode Island” made use of Quonset huts to solve their housing shortage, noting that the universities here at home should make use of these same solutions.
By the start of the 1946 school year, both schools had responded to the need for more temporary housing, albeit in different ways. At MIT, instead of dispersing temporary housing throughout the campus, they constructed housing units on the field between Vassar Street and Memorial Drive, naming the site Westgate. Westgate was a planned community designed by the Dean of the MIT Architecture School, William W. Wurster. Made up of exactly 100 units (50 one-bedroom units and 50 two-bedroom units), MIT saw Westgate as a pilot run for future married housing at MIT, planning the community as though it was permanent, even though the school expected to demolish Westgate by 1951. Harvard took a different approach: instead of choosing a single site for their veterans housing, they placed temporary housing units wherever there was space. Harvard’s main temporary housing community was placed on Jarvis Field where the Harvard Graduate Center/Harkness Commons, designed by The Architects Collaborative (TAC) under Walter Gropius, stands today.
Harvard constructed additional housing off Francis Avenue and on Andover Street, and even housed some students further from campus at the intersection of Western Avenue and Memorial Drive, highlighting the desperate measures the city and the universities had to take to ensure there were housing units for any who needed them.
In 1951, after 5 years of the temporary housing program, these rectangular, planned units began to come down across the city. As a pilot program, it is hard not to say that the city was successful in its main goal: providing housing for veterans with no permanent place to live; however, the program saw its fair share of setbacks. In an early case of backlash against the construction of housing, residents of West Cambridge fought against the erection of temporary housing at the corner of Lake View Avenue and Vassal Lane, stating that a change to the zoning laws in the area would ruin the character of the neighborhood. Additionally, the temporary structures were both flimsy and highly flammable, leading to injuries amongst people living within these structures. In one case, a fire on Berkshire Street burned out an entire temporary building. Though no one was killed in the blaze, one woman broke her back jumping out of a second story window.
While there are many stories about the complaints of both Cambridge residents and veterans regarding their new temporary housing, it is hard to deny the success of the program. The city moved efficiently to ensure that the federal government finished the construction of housing by 1946, put immense pressure on Harvard and MIT to follow suit, and provided the necessary utilities to make life in the units as comfortable as they could. Today, the sites of many of these structures are recreational areas or integral parts of campus life at Harvard and MIT.
The temporary veterans housing program provided a stop gap to the housing crisis in Cambridge, giving the city and two universities time to plan, design, and construct permanent housing in the 5-year period that these temporary structures stood. When Congress passed the National Housing Act in 1949, the city gained access to federal funds, allowing Cambridge to proceed with the erection of public housing across the city. Though Cambridge already had two major housing projects in Newtowne Court and Washington Elms, the National Housing Act of 1949 helped fund the construction of 11 new public housing projects in just five years, including Woodrow Wilson Court off Magazine Street in Cambridgeport, Jefferson Park on Rindge Avenue in North Cambridge, Roosevelt Towers on Cambridge Street in Wellington-Harrington, and Jackson Gardens on Harvard and Prospect Streets in Mid Cambridge, a site specifically for veterans families. From 1949 to 1954, the city expanded its public housing stock from 618 units to 1612 units, with many occupants being those that once took up units in the temporary housing blocks.
The end of temporary housing was swift in Cambridge. There were no large demolitions or spectacles while the structures came down, nor was there anyone up in arms as their short-term apartments disappeared. The housing units quickly fell out of the Cantabrigian collective memory, their sites converted into public parks and parking lots. Though they were not spectacular structures by any means, the temporary veterans housing in Cambridge provided a much-needed buffer to the city as it figured out how to house its citizens. Without the temporary housing units of the post-war period, it is likely that the WWII veterans of Cambridge would have been forced out, unable to pay the skyrocketing rental prices haunting the city. Temporary housing certainly has its drawbacks, but it is hard to deny how integral the structures were in maintaining the character of the city when it was most threatened.
Berkshire Street
The Berkshire Street Temporary Veterans Housing, built in 1946, was constructed adjacent to Cambridge Field (now known as Donnelly Field) in East Cambridge. Though not one of the city’s largest temporary housing projects, Berkshire Street is perhaps most notable for being the only temporary housing built in East Cambridge, where a lack of buildable space made temporary housing difficult. Despite the many challenges already faced by the city in constructing temporary housing units in such a densely populated area, these challenges only compounded when veterans began moving into these temporary units. As the housing was prefabricated and quickly built with cheap materials, the structures were not well insulated. In the first winter for families living in Berkshire Street Housing and across the city, there were numerous complaints regarding the inability for apartments to stay warm during the cold season. Worse, on November 10th of 1948, a fire spread throughout the structure, possibly stemming from two children in the apartment playing with matches. Though nobody died, one woman was injured, and many within the structure were forced to find new housing. The city was sued for negligence and mismanagement in relation to the fire. The troubles that the Berkshire St units faced made clear the perhaps obvious difficulties in erecting housing that was not meant to last more than five years; however, it was the troubles tenants faced at Berkshire St that forced the city to commit more funds and effort to maintaining the temporary units around the city as they shifted focus to constructing permanent housing projects. As a veterans group stated in a city meeting, “It is clear that these dwellings must serve for some time to come, and every effort should be made to maintain and improve them in the period before the actual finishing of the permanent houses.”
Harvard University – Jarvis Field
Jarvis Field was once the site of Harvard football games in the late 19th century, but by the 20th century was converted into a recreational field for Harvard students. During the war, the site was used as a training ground for the navy, and saw certain temporary structures built atop it to provide an ideal space for naval activities. As these structures came down at the end of the war, Harvard was left with an open field yet again and seeing the viability of temporary structures on the field, opted to have veteran family student housing built there. The site consisted of ten structures, five on either side of the field with a central courtyard for recreation and daycare facilities. The buildings varied in size, with one structure for 14 occupants, 4 structures for 16 occupants, and 5 structures for 14 occupants. The Jarvis Field temporary housing was integral in slowing down the sheer number of students looking for housing outside of school grounds. In 1949, Harvard announced that they would tear down the temporary housing and begin plans for new permanent graduate housing on Jarvis Field. Dean of the Architecture School, Walter Gropius, was tasked with designing the new structures. In some ways, Gropius’s modernism, though more elegant, is not drastically different in form than the temporary housing that once lined the field.
MIT – Westgate
Set between Vassar Street and Memorial Drive, Westgate and Westgate West were MIT’s two major temporary housing sites in the years after the war. Much larger in scale than any of the other temporary housing sites around the city, Westgate was imagined as a pilot run for future married students housing at MIT, providing the school with data and designs that would play a larger role for construction and future campus planning. At MIT, 3000 of the 5000 students were veterans in 1946, many of them bringing spouses and children with them to Cambridge.
100 units of housing were first built at Westgate. These buildings were two stories in height and ranged between one and two bedrooms with a living room, bathroom, kitchen, and porch projecting off their rectangular form.
Rents for Westgate units ranged from $45 to $55 per month depending on the number of bedrooms. Although Westgate provided some much-needed housing for MIT, by the start of the new academic year it was clear that the school needed to build more housing to address rising demand. MIT, with the help of the federal government, purchased naval barracks from Newport, Rhode Island, and transported them to Cambridge to extend Westgate further west, aptly naming this new development “Westgate West.” The temporary community was designed around a set of Quonset huts, providing a nursery, a dining hall, and other necessities for veterans, located between the original Westgate and Westgate West.
Of the temporary structures built in Cambridge for veterans, Westgate by far had the longest life span. Well designed and liked by tenants, MIT did not begin demolition of the temporary housing until 1957, finally clearing the site in 1959. In total, over 3500 students resided at Westgate as tenants, far greater than the numbers Harvard or the city saw during their experiments with temporary veterans housing.
Four years after the temporary housing development was demolished, MIT constructed a new, permanent apartment building for married graduate students on the same grounds, aptly naming the structures “Westgate.” The new Westgate can be found today at 540 Memorial Drive. The low-lying buildings there serve as a testament to the university’s quest to provide satisfactory housing for married students.
Lake View Avenue
While the city was able to construct most temporary housing with relative ease, a planned development of housing units at the corner of Lake View Avenue and Vassal Lane faced neighborhood backlash. Residents here wished for their neighborhood to maintain its character and spoke out against the possibility of veteran’s housing on the site, even though the units would last for only five years. The Cambridge Housing Authority was a big proponent of the units being put on Lake View Ave, seeing the corner as offering ample space within a residential area, something that the city lacked in most places. Plans for the new structures were announced, including a plan to change the zoning restrictions from a Residence B classification to a Residence C-2 classification, which would allow the city to construct multi-housing and apartment buildings on the site. The original proposal included four-story temporary apartments on the corner, but as a compromise with residents on Lake View, the city stated they would only construct three-story housing. This compromise failed to quell the anger of residents, who saw the change to the zoning regulations as an omen for the destruction of the neighborhood.
Though all noting that they supported the construction of temporary housing for veterans, the residents of Lake View Ave were steadfast in their belief that the neighborhood would be ruined by these structures, believing that the housing would degrade the neighborhood. With the majority of the City Council voting against the change in zoning status for the district, the city was forced to reposition, instead constructing single- and two-family homes on the corner that fit the urban context, a loss for the many veterans reliant on these temporary units for their livelihood.
In 1950, seven single- and two-family homes were constructed by the D.C. Loveys company, each house being rented to a veteran family for a period of five years. After these five years, the units were sold with veteran tenants given priority. This housing was by far the most permanent of the temporary housing built, lasting until 1991, but the story of the battle for housing shows the complexity of housing issues after the war. While many were well aware of the burgeoning housing crisis, some were not willing to forget the character of their neighborhood in favor of housing, even if it would only be a perceived eye-sore for a period of five years. While veterans lucky enough to live in the homes on Lake View certainly had better and more permanent housing compared to their compatriots, the protests of residents in the neighborhood prevented over 30 veteran families from finding housing in the city.
Sources:
The Cambridge Chronicle
Cambridge Public Library Historic Newspaper Database
Cambridge Historical Commission Research Files
Cambridge Historical Commission Architectural Survey Files
Harvard University Archives
MIT Museum Archives
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. 1950.