Quonset Huts | Up Close

Born in Rhode Island and built for  U.S. troops overseas during World War II, Quonset huts were ideal all-purpose military structures that found their way into American life in the late 1940s. Initially adapted as prefabricated homes, Quonset huts were used as barns, car dealerships, banks, bowling alleys, and service stations. Loved by some, loathed by others, these semicylindrical huts became lasting icons of postwar America.

The huts were named after a newly built Navy base at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. In 1941, the George A. Fuller Company, one of the firms that was building the base, was asked to design and produce a hut for U.S. military use. The first Quonset huts measured 16 by 36 feet, and the curve of the roof extended all the way to the ground. The odd shape let the entire building be buried in dirt as protection from shelling, without collapsing under the weight. To meet wartime demand for the huts, which grew to thousands in number, a one-story factory was constructed in West Davisville, Rhode Island, along the New Haven Railroad line. The George A. Fuller Company produced a total of 32,352 huts in West Davisville before the job was transferred to Stran-Steel, a subsidiary of the Great Lakes Steel Corporation. At its peak, Fuller’s factory employed 3,000 men and produced 150 huts a day. The Navy’s practice of using civilian contractors to build military installations was problematic during wartime. Most contractors lacked military experience, and as civilians, they were prohibited by international law from direct involvement in military actions. On December 28, 1941, authorization was requested to form a military construction battalion made up of men recruited from the building trades. “Construction Batallion” was soon shortened to “CB,” and before long this group would come to be known as the Seabees. Today there’s a Seabee Museum & Memorial Park in Davisville. During the war, the idea of using Quonsets for nonmilitary housing started to gain favor. Between 1943 and 1945, the Navy erected 6,285 Quonset huts as housing for soldiers and their families. A fully furnished two-bedroom hut with kitchen and bathroom cost an average of $3,350, including utilities, infrastructure, and furniture. Legendary Nashville music producer Owen Bradley built a studio in a surplus Quonset. The acoustic effects of the building’s shape included amplification of sounds in the upper-middle range, which would become an essential element of the “Nashville sound” of artists such as Patsy Cline, who recorded there. Years later, when Bradley built his new studio, he instructed engineers to design it with the same acoustics as his old Quonset. A young Gerald Ford set up his first congressional campaign headquarters in a Quonset in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1948. Vermont’s Killington Ski Area opened in 1958, with a converted Quonset hut serving as its first base lodge. In 1978, 17 Quonset huts at Camp Endicott in Davisville, Rhode Island, dating back to 1942, were added to the National Register of Historic Places.