Standard Houses, Perspective

In 1937 Goldberg designed a simple prefabricated plywood panel house as a demonstration for the Purdue Housing Research Project in Lafayette, Indiana. Two years later, this experimental design formed the basis for his Standard Houses Corporation, founded with the goal of building a “model community” instead of a single model house. After securing an advance on materials from local manufacturers, Goldberg and his associate Gilmer Black built a small community of five prefabricated houses in the Chicago suburb Melrose Park. With the assistance of articles in several local papers, the Standard Houses received 3,000 visitors in a single day. Attesting to his keen understanding of popular taste, Goldberg’s high-tech, factory-built structures were marketed as traditional Cape Cods and Colonials, with wood siding, gabled roofs, shutters, and optional fireplaces—houses that catered to the overwhelming popular preference for modern houses packaged in traditional exteriors.