Before Trailer Homes

Yet another trip down a rabbit hole courtesy of a random trip to a National Park Service web page: 1906 Earthquake Cottages. Just a reminder: as awful as that earthquake was, a lot of the worst damage to smaller buildings – wood-framed houses, for example – came from the fires that followed the quake. A lot of people were temporarily without housing in a city where every building had to be treated as potentially dangerous. Enter the cottages, miniature houses built of 2xs and plank that could be quickly: Courtesy of the the National Park Service. Photos of the temporary refugee camps show a lot of canvas tents, both traditional gable style and in a round center-pole style that looks like a miniature circus tent, as well as the cottages. Looking at the pictures, It is not a surprise to read that most of the camps were managed by the army. It is also not a surprise to hear that people moved the cottages from the camps to empty ordinary lots, to continue using them as houses. If you had…