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In the 1930s, the Home of the Future Was a Ball You Towed by Tractor

Whether it's deserved or not, mobile homes have kind of a stigma about them. Whether it's trailer park meth heads or the good-natured gents that used to live in Winnebagos outside my house in Santa Barbara, people tend to be just a wee bit skeptical...

Whether it’s deserved or not, mobile homes have kind of a stigma about them. Whether it’s trailer park meth heads or the good-natured gents that used to live in Winnebagos outside my house in Santa Barbara, people tend to be just a wee bit skeptical about those folks that can drive their houses around.

But it hasn’t always been that way. Back in the wacky 1930s, when the whole retrofuture ideal of nuclear families and nuclear lives was really starting to pick up, mobile homes were all the rage. Specifically, spherical homes surrounded with windows that you’d tow behind your tractor and plop into a big hole in the ground like a domestic pinball game. We can thank the always-excellent Paleofuture for digging this up:

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The September, 1934 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics imagined the house of the future as an enormous sphere that would make moving easy if the home owner simply wrapped large tires over the thing and towed it with a tractor. [From Everyday Science and Mechanics] “If spherical, the house of the future can be easily transported to its building lot, set in place, and the fixtures added. The shell is first pressed into shape; then windows are cut, and only a protective tire is need for moving.”

In a sense, the ball house is a progenitor of the 50s-era track homes that came to define the American dream. There’s a case to be made for the potential efficiency of building homes on an assembly line and wheeling them into place, especially when you think of how costly and wasteful it is to build, power, and maintain the giant McMansions that have become the new American ideal.

At the same time, how efficient would it really be to be towing every American house into place? I mean, it’s not exactly a purchase that you can just throw into your SUV. And what if one broke free and rolled away? Still, if this is the first step to creating a network of pinball rails to sling new houses into suburbia, let’s bring this idea back for the spectacle alone.

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