Same with mine, back in 1942. Lived in it until he died recently at 100. Had seven kids in a three room house, and wasn’t until the 60’s he expanded it. Of course the only time the kids were inside was sleeping. Unheard of today.

He also joked that he had a hard time getting a loan. They wanted to see plans, etc. “Why the hell do you need plans for a house?”. He built aircraft; those you needed plans for.

I recently got a copy of "A Field Guide to American Houses", from which I learned the term "vernacular architecture" and that all the house names you hear on TV (Victorian, Cape Cod, Ranch ...) are just one slice of architecture, "polite architecture", and historically not a very big one. The way most of us think of architecture today, an architect designs the building to some (not necessarily well thought out ;-p) philosophy and then you go and build it out of the appropriate materials.

In vernacular architecture, someone woke up one day and decided to build a house. They built it house-shaped, from whatever materials were cheapest and most available in their region at the time, using whatever techniques were common in said time and place. The patterns of vernacular houses in different times and places are fascinating; you're shining a flashlight through the region of a peoples' brains where the archetype "house" is stored and seeing what it looks like.

Yep. His house is in Pensacola, FL. So the interior walls are stained pine board (FL panhandle prized by Spain for pine timber & naval stores). Exterior is clay tile with an air gap to prevent interior moisture build up. Steel roof.

Ha! My mother shared a bedroom with two other sisters up until she was about 15 in the aforementioned house, it was different back then...

Loaning standards were different back then, based on my acquired knowledge from The Big Short.

Yeah, that was a good movie. NINJA loans (No Income No JOB no Assets).