Demoing my house and realizing that it wasn’t all metal, like modern quonsets are, made me do some research into the history of these buildings. The US Navy Quonset Blog has an excellent post about the process of building these very efficient buildings.
Assembling a quonset hut (credit: US Navy Quonset Hut Blog)
For me, the biggest surprise was that the only metal part of these buildings are the roof sheeting, everything else is wood. I’m thinking that my home doesn’t have any metal at all now. The rubber and asphalt roof combined with traditional siding replaces the metal sheeting. The upside is that this should make increasing the width of some of the dormers much easier.
Closer to home, I found this article in the Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Patch from 2013, Quonset Huts Keep History Alive in Sturtevant. The article is somewhat mis-titled as it doesn’t really outline much of the “history”. It’s just speculated that these homes were built for factory workers.
A little row of quonsets!(credit: Mount Pleasant-Sturtevant Patch)
Regardless of the history of my little quonset, it has an interesting future awaiting it.
