Quonset Hut: Born of Emergency

Responce to Emergency

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor, destroying much of the United States’ Pacific fleet. One day later, the United States declared war on Japan.¹ The country was in a state of emergency. Alaska was perceived as a target for a Japanese invasion, and underwent a rapid process of militarization.² The isolated territory, which was populated by about sixty thousand native Alaskans and non-natives before the war, absorbed nearly $3 billion military spending by the war’s end. 300,000 military personnel were stationed there, and three hundred military installations were constructed.³ The rapid response of the United States army could not have been possible without prefabricated structures such as the Quonset hut.

Design

The contract to build a base at naval Quonset Point was given to a partnership of George A. Fuller and Company and The Merritt-Chapman and Scott Corporation. Construction began on July 16, 1940. In March of 1941, when the base was near its completion, Admiral Ben Morrell, chief of the Bureau of Yard and Docks, discussed with representatives of Fuller and Scott the navy’s need for a prefabricated hut system to shelter troops abroad. The first shipment of huts needed to be ready by June 1.⁴ Fuller assembled an architectural team led by Otto Brandenberger to design the huts. According to other team members, Brandenberger, a swiss immigrant and graduate of the Zurich Technical Institute, contributed most to the design.⁵ In addition to instructing the team to use the British Nissen hut the starting point, the navy gave them two conditions for the hut design, “the new huts had to be arch shaped, for strength and deflection of shell fragments, and able to be quickly and simply assembled.”⁶ While the arch shape of the Nissen hut was imported to the Quonset hut, Brandeberger’s team made a number of design changes which made the hut easier and faster to erect as well as more comfortable to inhabit. According to Fuller, “The British had been on the right track but too many gadgets slowed erection; and with no insulation between inner and outer metal shells the Nissen huts were hot in the summer and cold in the winter.”⁷

Nissen Hut: http://www.ron.blundell.btinternet.co.uk/images/nissen.jpg

Notes

Julie Decker and Chris Chiei, Quonset Hut: Metal Living for a Modern Age (New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005) , 21.

2. Decker and Chiei, 32, 33.

3. Decker and Chiei, 31.

4. Decker and Chiei, 1-3.

5. Decker and Chiei, 4.

6. Decker and Chiei, 6.

6. Decker and Chiei, 6.