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Deborah

Creative Housing

I’m still learning new things about the city I’ve lived in for 38 years.

When San Francisco’s trams switched from horsepower to electricity, some of its inhabitants made good use of the obsolete railcars:




The photo above, ca. 1896, was the beginning of an enclave of railcars converted to homes and businesses, known as “Carville”. This scene is 2-3 blocks from Ocean Beach.
Loic

Were they mainly taken up by the poor?
Deborah

loic wrote:
Were they mainly taken up by the poor?

In answer (I hope) to your question, I'll quote part of the article:

Quote:
Reading the magazine and newspaper articles of the time, it's clear that Carville (or occasionally "Cartown") became a fashionable, if quirky, phenomenon.

Bicycling was a raging fad of the day, and a ladies bicycle club named "The Falcons" rented one of the first cars at the beach. They created a cozy clubhouse not only as a refuge to relax in after rides (they took naps on the long, upholstered seats), but as a locale for card games, large dinner parties, and other soirees. 8

Another group of women turned a car into "A Haunt of Bohemia", as the Strand called it. "Thither they betake themselves from Saturday evening to Monday noons. Invitations to the dinner parties which are given there are largely sought."

Working musicians christened another car "La Boheme" and used it as a retreat when their shifts in the city's cafes and music halls came to an end. Between midnight and seven in the morning, members drank and played the night away, taking nocturnal dips in the icy ocean between rounds. On the walls they posted "pictures of all shapes and sizes, posters, verses, bits of doggerel, photographs, clippings from papers, cuttings, beads, shells and a thousand things."

While a majority of the cars were used in a part-time way---as clubhouses, bases for family day trips to the ocean breezes, locations for secret romantic rendezvous, or even hiding places for beleaguered city officials---more permanent residents arrived. By 1901 there were a reported fifty families living in about 100 cars. While many of the renters kept their cars spartan, other occupants brought in all the filigree and ornamentation of a Victorian household. Tea rooms and restaurants opened in old cable cars. 11 Even an Episcopal church arose in the dunes, using "North Beach and Mission cars" for its second floor.

The Overland Monthly remarked on the home gardens of nasturtiums and pelargoniums. Scientific American reported on the ingenious cobbled-together creations (many two-storied) that redefined living space. Other articles mentioned the tongue-on-cheek titles residents gave their surroundings: a prominent mound of sand was "Mt. Diabolo", and each other's dwellings became "Castle Chillon" or "Fortress Quebec". By 1908, there were complaints that Carville was being ruined by the addition of telephone and electric lines, and the replacing of plank-board pathways between cars with concrete sidewalks.

I don't think they were the homes and businesses of the really poor, but possibly the owners did like the idea of saving money by recycling.
Uriel

There is a company called Max Power offering to refit airplanes as houses:



http://www.maxpoweraero.com/ACHomes.htm

I remember reading about a woman in California who was doing just that with a 747.
Deborah

I like that one!
Deborah

Another example of recycling used transportation vehicles was the Niantic Hotel in early San Francisco.

The ship Niantic was one of many abandoned in San Francisco Bay during the 1849 Gold Rush. It was dragged ashore and divided into offices and warehouses. When a fire burned it down to the submerged hulk, the hulk formed the foundation of the new Niantic Hotel.
Loic

Sounds like homes marketed for the hippies then! It is certainly a very unconventional way to have a roof over your head.
Deborah

loic wrote:
Sounds like homes marketed for the hippies then!

I suppose the people who lived in Carville might have been considered Bohemians.
Uriel

I've always wanted to have an underground house!



And it actually had nothing to do with hobbits or Tolkien; when I was a kid my parents had a copy of the ultimate hippie rag: The Whole Earth Catalog. Which explained it all in detail -- how it would be enormously naturally insulated, how to rig up solar panels, how to landscape your roof, etc.

Then along came Roger Dean, the British illustrator responsible for all those great Yes and Asia album covers, with his vision of sprayed concrete bubble homes (yes, we are reliving the seventies, here!):



Damn I miss my copy of Magnetic Storm!
Benjamin [inactive]

Uriel wrote:
Then along came Roger Dean, the British illustrator responsible for all those great Yes and Asia album covers, with his vision of sprayed concrete bubble homes (yes, we are reliving the seventies, here!):



Damn I miss my copy of Magnetic Storm!

I remember visiting one of those at the Tomorrow's World Exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre about nine years ago. There was a lot of hype surrounding it, and at the time, we really did believe that houses would be built like that in 10 years time (i.e. now). But somehow, that didn't happen.
Uriel

For the same reason that electric cars haven't replaced gas ones -- you would need to retrofit an entire industry (and its related industries) in order to effect such a drastic change.

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