BOXCAR HOME
AIRING: Season 7, Episode 6
THE DETECTIVE: Gwen Wright
THE PLACE: Lakewood, Colorado
THE CASE:
Ten million American service men and women came home at the close of WWII, eager to turn their energies from fighting to building a modern postwar nation. An emerging network of interstate highways would encourage a new scale of housing in large new suburbs, places like Levittown, New York, where the company’s factory produced one four room house every 16 minutes in 1950.
The Depression, followed by the war years, had left the nation with a critical housing shortage. Where would the army of returning GI’s live?
History Detectives investigates a discovery which may offer a unique look at how necessity became the mother of invention in postwar America. Has a boxcar been used to build a couple's Lakewood home?
Feature: Building Background
Find out more about investigating the history of buildings.
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