by michael finger
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n the morning of August 15, 1945, Memphians picked up their copies of THE COMMERCIAL Appeal and read the main headline with stunned relief: WAR IS OVER! After more than four years of fighting in Europe, Africa, and Asia, tens of thousands of Allied soldiers would finally be coming home. Many of these men and women, however, had no homes waiting for them when they got here. During the war years, home building companies, along with businesses of all kinds, did their part for the war effort. The Fisher Body Works Plant in Memphis was converted into an airplane factory. Firestone and International Harvester churned out tires, tools, and other equipment needed by the military. Plumbing, electrical, lumber, and other supply companies essential for the construction of residences diverted their inventory towards the war effort. For almost four years, home building in America was essentially put on hold.
With all these returning veterans, the housing shortage in America after World War II was considered so dire that Congress declared a “national housing emergency.” A summary of domestic conditions by the National Bureau of Economic Research put it this way: “The housing situation, and not unemployment, was to be the nation’s critical domestic problem.” Addressing the crisis, President Harry Truman signed the National Housing Act, with the purpose of “providing a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family.” Eleven million. That’s how many new homes the government estimated were needed by all those soldiers suddenly returning home. “Following the surreal images of World War II, the country desperately desired a return to safety and living the American dream — get a job, buy a house, marry and raise a family,” according to an article in the National Real Estate Investor. But that eagerly awaited transition to a peacetime existence — a world of new homes, schools, and happy neighborhoods — was hindered by a drastic shortage of building materials, along with wartime regulations that still rationed items like rubber, steel, copper, and aluminum — essential products for home construction. In Memphis, the situation was so bleak for returning veterans that Memphis State College and Southwestern hauled trailers to their campuses to provide housing for married families who wished to attend school there. Grand old homes in neighborhoods like Central Gardens and Annesdale-Snowden were converted into living spaces for as many as four different families. That’s when a group of local business leaders joined forces to tackle the problem.
MAIN PHOTOS COURTESY WTNHBA
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allace Johnson, along with other Memphis home builders, realized they couldn’t solve the housing problem on their own, but by working together, they could snip away at the government red tape that was hindering their progress, and they could also link builders with suppliers and contractors. The new group was called, quite logically, the Home Builders Association of Memphis. First organized in late 1944 and officially chartered in 1945, the HBAM had a rather broad, but strategic, goal: “The Home Builders Association was formed as a vehicle to promote the interest of legitimate home builders, to improve their skill and technique in all of their procedures, to advance and perfect their talents for design and beauty in planning, to insure the best practices, and by fair dealings, to gain and hold the
confidence of the home-seeking public.” Since he was the impetus behind the organization, it made sense that Johnson was elected to a one-year term as the group’s first president. One of the most prolific and successful builders in Memphis history, Johnson can take credit for populating much of East Memphis with well-designed and affordable homes. The streets of major subdivisions such as Colonial Acres are lined with houses designed and constructed by his company, and he later became a partner with Kemmons Wilson to develop Holiday Inns across America. Other officers in that first year were vice president James B. Goodwin, owner of a large construction firm here, and secretary R.A. McDougal, an executive with Pilley Nicodemus Lumber Company. The Home Builders Association started out with only 13 charter members, all of them involved in real estate sales or construction: McNeese Construction Company, Chandler & Chandler, Dave Dermon & Company, McNeese Construction Company, J. Ripley Greer, Harry Dlugach, Benjamin Dlugach, Charles A. Cleaves, Dobson and Smith Real Estate, Sam Stephenson, Pennell and Gill, and Herman Gruber. In the beginning the group gathered for “Dutch
Kemmons Wilson holds a ballot box after a 1955 meeting. As HBAM president that year, he spearheaded the construction of the group’s first Home Builders Center.
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