A Look at 1941

Like most other big U. S. cities, Philadelphia is cursed with sleazy slum districts, talks much about the redemption of its blighted areas. Last week it heard news of redemption from an unusual source: the U. S. Navy. Announced by the Navy was a full-blown plan to build new homes for the families of 1,100 Navy Yard workers on a dreary South Philadelphia site near Twentieth Street and Packer Avenue. Cost of building will be paid out of a $100,000,000 Army-Navy building fund set up by Congress to provide homes for defense workers and members of the armed establishments.

The Navy's Philadelphia plan was only a tiny phase of a vastly more intricate problem growing out of defense. The problem : how much building--housing, industrial, Army-Navy--will be required for U. S. rearmament? This week ARCHITECTURAL FORUM outlined the problem's massive form, devoted its November issue to building for defense.

Looking backward before looking forward, FORUM found World War I's building picture something less than pretty. Declaration of war found the military departments unprepared. The 32 great cantonments for U. S. soldiers and additions to regular Army barracks had to be wastefully rushed (cost: $273,000,000); the 16 used for drafted men cost twice what they should have. There were bottlenecks in labor and lumber, a shortage of competent foremen, towering bills for overtime. Toward the end, workers were imported from Puerto Rico and the West Indies. Result of all the rush was a set of unsightly buildings that for the most part came down, for salvage, after war was over.

This time the stage has been set. Of $6,500,000,000 already allocated for national defense up to Sept. 15 this year, some 11 1/2% has been laid out for building --factories, shipyards, workers' homes. For defense building in the military and naval classification alone, plans call for $1,000,000,000 to be spent in fiscal 1941.

"The significance of these figures to the building industry,"said FORUM,"can be evaluated only in relation to pre-defense building volume. Last year's expenditures for buildings of all types --public and private --totaled barely $4,000,000,000. Next year's will certainly total $6,000,000,000. . . . Biggest increase, of course, will be in the military and naval classification. . . ."

For the 1941 housing demand (a subdivision of all building) FORUM foresaw a total of $2,500,000,000. This would be a cool half-billion above the depression high of 1939, but still well below the $4,000,000,000 annual demand of building's blooming quadrennium, 1926-29.

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