Home Delivery: My Father and the Midcentury House Contest that Launched His Career

S. Guy Fishman’s 1951 Better Rooms Competition first prize entry. Entry detail of a view toward the terrace showing sleeping area at left and sitting area in right foreground.

From NewCity Lit

Between 1945 and 1946, when the end of World War II spurred the demobilization of 7.6 million Americans who were in military service, Chicago veterans returned to a city short by more than 100,000 homes. Homes affordable to young adults starting anew were especially lacking. The G.I. Bill offered help. The benefits program for returning vets offered them extremely low-cost or free career training or higher ed. That kept many G.I.s out of the housing market for a while, but put pressure on where they chose to study. Northwestern built one-hundred Quonset huts for its rush of students. That lack of student housing foreshadowed a coming surge in demand for non-student housing and other structures that young families would need. The opportunities were apparent to some of the same returnees starved for student housing. The demand for buildings nudged so many Illinois vets into architecture programs that ...

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