Goodyear Makes Its Bow

A truck, loaded with what looked like a big box, rolled along a Washington street last week, came to a stop beside a filling station at the corner of Connecticut and N Streets. Swiftly the boxlike affair was unloaded. In exactly 3 1/2 hours, nine men had turned it into a two-bedroom house, ready for occupancy. In this eye-opening way, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. put on exhibition its prefabricated house, built by its subsidiary, Wingfoot Homes, Inc.

The result of four years of experiment and trial building, the 26-by-8-ft. wooden house has walls of "Tempered Presdwood" and plywood, wings which slide out like bureau drawers to form two bedrooms, a kitchen-dining-living room, and bathroom. It is set up complete with all plumbing, bathroom and kitchen fixtures, built-in beds, and bureaus.

Goodyear has been operating a pilot assembly plant in Litchfield Park, Ariz, for a year, believes that 48,900 houses a year can be mass-produced at a cost of under $2,500 apiece, plus delivery charges. Like some 'other prefabricators, notably Bucky Fuller, Goodyear Board Chairman Paul W. Litchfield thinks that surplus war plants could be used to turn out his houses. But Wingfoot has made few houses to date, for the same reason that has delayed all building: lack of materials.

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