Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes

by Allan D. Wallis

A lively and informative history of the mobile home in the United States over six decades―extensively illustrated with period photographs and vivid portraits of the people who live in mobile homes and the industry pioneers who designed and built them. In Wheel Estate , Allan Wallis offers a lively and informative history of the mobile home in the United States over six decades. His colorful account, extensively illustrated with period photographs and vivid portraits of the people who live in mobile homes and the industry pioneers who designed and built them, will inform and amuse anyone curious about this American phenomenon. Beginning with the travel trailers of the late 1920s and 1930s―with models that were built like yachts or unfolded like Polaroid cameras―Wallis moves through the World War II era, when the industry mushroomed as trailers became homes for thousands of defense workers, to the post war era, when trailers became year-round housing. The industry responded with new models―now called mobile homes―that tried to strike a balance between house and vehicle, even as owners built their own often fanciful additions (including one mobile home complete with Egyptian pylons). Carrying the story up to the present, Wallis links the need for mobile homes to continuing housing crises. He traces regulations and reforms aimed at "linear living," arguing in the end that manufactured housing remains distinctively American and embodies fundamental national ideas of home and community.

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 1991

Reviews

[Lora Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely a particular kind of book for a particular kind of audience - and I think I am that particular kind of audience. (And it's definitely a more academic read.) This is one of the few books that covers manufactured homes as a topic (that's not a guide on how to buy/invest in/repair them). From the perspective of 2020, this book is obviously dated; however, this book thoroughly covered the evolution of these homes from camper trailers, through house trailers, mobile homes, and finally into the era of the Manufacured Home. Wallis comprehensively discusses the history of the thing that is a Manufactured Home, along with its (often fraught) relationship with where they are allowed to be, the form and function of this housing type, and how they are allowed to be.

I work in city/land use planning, and I've been looking for something that fills in the gaps of my knowledge on this type of housing, and this book was a perfect solution. I am obsessed and took entirely too many notes. Now excuse me while I fall down a rabbit hole of manufactured housing research at the inspiration of this book...

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is something I picked up through a booksharing site, its a history of the trailer home in America. This book was written in the 90s but it captures a history that now seems more relevant than ever as tiny homes have become a trending topic (and the boundaries of its definitions have spread to, frankly, anything that isn't a mcmansion.)

Offsite fabrication is now also finally becoming a serious part of the construction industry.

This book is technological and social history intertwined and of great relevance to Architecture. Thorough, well put together and with a few useful pictures and drawings of the detail and layout of some trailer homes.

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Wheel Estate: The Rise and Decline of Mobile Homes shortly after finishing Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. For about two weeks, my head rocketed between large spaces crammed with paper, objects and things to tiny spaces, carefully composed and perfectly arranged.

It was all a bit overwhelming.

Wheel Estate was a really good read though. It's about the mobile home, which has had a significant place in American culture: recreation, affordable housing, and planned communities. The work covers car camping and travel trailers of the 20s and 30s, and continues through the military and post war years when low cost, temporary housing was needed for the emerging middle class, and later, greater acceptance as manufactured housing. The Florida senior housing phenomenon and mobile home communities in general are well presented, including land use, local ordinances, neighborhood acceptace and rejection and self-sufficiency.

Wonderful photos of vintage vehicles and early manufactured homes, along with visionary plans for new communities created out of parking structures and container cars. There's so much creativity in establishing ownership and personal place, that I was compelled to drive through local mobile home communities with a new eye for these unique structures and unusual residences.

Highly recommended for lovers of architecture, Roadside America and Airstreams.

--Ashland Mystery