Powering the Dream_ The History and Promise of Green Technology - Alexis Madrigal [45]
Then, in 1947, Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company published a book with Simon and Schuster called Your Solar House, in which forty-nine architects designed homes appropriate for the forty-eight existing states plus the District of Columbia. In this, they were following the long traditions of vernacular architecture, building homes that suited prevailing weather conditions.7 For instance, the Florida home had a glassed-in garden and a solar hot water heater. A two-story home was built largely from stone and tried to fit into the august “traditions of Delaware architecture.” The Arkansas home was designed “using native materials” in a style “reminiscent of early American architecture”; it looks remarkably like any old subdivision home you might find, a nod to the architect’s belief that “although startling scientific discoveries will have terrific impact on our way of living, it will take more energy than the split atom generates to change people’s tastes and desires.”8
To many, the solar home seemed the perfect match between the traditions of old and the science of the new age. New York Times critic Mary Roche wrote in 1945 that
solar-house enthusiasts love to quote passages from Socrates and Xenophon and to cite building practices adopted by the Swiss 300 years ago and by the Chinese centuries before that, all by way of proving that solar heating is not a new-fangled idea. What has given it the aura of a machine-age miracle is the recent development of thermopane—the double plate glass pane with a metal-sealed dehydrated air space in between.
By 1947 whole subdivisions in the Chicago and New York suburbs were being built with solar home design principles. A 1948 Washington Post article exclaimed, “Solar Houses Win Approval Across Nation.” That article went on to explain that in the first half of 1948, “more than 75 percent of the single family residences featured were of the solar type.” Homebuilder magazines showed a similar trend, with 63 percent of the homes in those publications incorporating solar design.9 The solar home looked to be on its way to a permanent place in the American building lexicon. Roche wrote that a new Keck house “will combine two principles widely acclaimed as inevitable in post-war home building—prefabricated construction and solar planning.”
In the early 1950s President Harry Truman appointed a committee to examine the country’s “materials resources.” Headed by William Paley, CEO of CBS, they issued the Cold War–flavored report Resources for Freedom, and even the blue ribbon corporate panel foresaw a place for solar homes. “Efforts to date to harness solar energy economically are infinitesimal. It is time for aggressive research in the whole field of solar energy—an effort in which the United States could make an immense contribution to the welfare of the free world,” they concluded.10 Even without such an effort, but only with existing technology, they predicted that up to thirteen million solar homes could be built by 1975. Even to the corporate bosses of the day, using as much solar energy as possible to offset the country’s fuel needs seemed like an excellent strategy. Americans, they believed, would think long term, choosing to pay a little more to build a home in exchange for the safety and peace of mind that came with needing less fuel. They expected the widespread deployment of solar energy by the mid-1970s.11
Their belief wasn’t based on any far-reaching technological change. Evidence had accumulated over the course of the 1940s that fairly simple architecture that heavily incorporated glass and smart siting could reduce the costs of heating a home.
By the late 1940s prefabricated construction was taking off, and solar planning, as Roche noted, seemed poised to go along for the ride. Green’s Ready-Built Homes, which had built a Keck house in its factory, estimated