If you've ever spent some time on an Army post, you might have seen one of these. They were built by the thousands during World War II, mostly in 1941 and 1942, and were meant to be temporary. They were also meant to be comfortable and useful; therefore, they were made very solidly with good sturdy materials integrated into an sensible and versatile architecture. They were not very pretty, but what do soldiers need with pretty anyhow?

I've lived and worked and studied in several of these things and love them dearly. All the weight is borne by the exterior walls and by posts in the interior, so there's no such thing in there as a weight bearing wall. That means you can put the walls anywhere, or nowhere, however you plan to use the building. I've seen this taken advantage of in all kinds of ways, from rows of tiny offices to huge classrooms to utterly open spaces to some mixture of these. They make fine barracks, school buildings, office buildings, retail stores, chapels, mess halls, you name it.

Because of the far overhanging roof, and the equally overhanging canopy over the first floor windows, much less water gets to the exterior walls and windows than would with a standard overhang. This improved the longevity of the buildings too, as it staved off rot.

These buildings are well lighted, thanks to all the windows, easy to heat, easy to cool, easy to adapt, easy to build - many of the things I like best in a building.

Which is why I am now searching for architectural drawings of these. I'd like to adapt them for use in South Florida. This will mean some changes, as wood timbers are harder to come by down here, and they rot a lot faster. I think this design can be adapted to steel stud construction, and possibly with brick, concrete, or cinder block exterior, depending. But to be able to tell, I really need the plans. I've been scouring the net for two days without much to show for it, but there's some good leads at the Library of Congress website, thanks to Wlofie, and some more good leads at the National Archives. However, the going is slow, and many of the leads I had before now turned out to be dead ends. I have no confidence that the ones I have now will be productive either.

An interesting by-product of all this searching has been the collection of odd facts and interesting stories involving these buildings. For instance, at the peak of construction, they were being built at a rate of one per hour, by some sources, and as fast as one every 32 minutes, by others. The former Fort Ord is having a helluva time getting rid of theirs, but not Fort McCoy, where reusing the materials seems to be working. Many of these have been taken over by the National Parks Service, or by various universities and government contractors. Some of them have even been bought and moved elsewhere.