Back in the day, Ladies Home Journal magazine really was about women and housing. Today, it’s more about high-fat cake recipes and low-fat diets, but that’s another story…

In the first decade of the new century, Ladies’ Home Journal consistently featured a majority of articles centered on homeownership. The February 1911 issue was devoted to the new housing style:  Bungalows. One headline said,  “The Bungalow, because of its easy housekeeping possibilities is becoming more popular every year and bungalows show what can be done with a little money wisely spent.” The same issue featured these articles:

When you build a little house (common mistakes to avoid)

How I built this house for $700

The Bungalow - from $250 - $2500

What I did with an old farmhouse

Two houses built for less than $1500

What can be done with old houses

A fireproof house for less than $4000

If a woman must earn her living at home (A house planned by a woman to meet this need.)

It seems as though that the ladies were ahead of the men on this bungalow thing. Whilst Ladies Home Journal was promoting bungalows, American Carpenter and Builder described them as “tiresome.”

Craftsman houses and odd bungalows will have their day. People may like them now, but it is an extreme type and will become tiresome in course of time. The uncompromising squareness in the craftsman style, with its small wall space does not permit of much artistic decoration (June 1913).

Within the pages of the 1920s LHJ, I was delighted to discover this advertisement for a catalog of mail-order kit homes. The next picture below features a real, live GVT #633 in Roanoke, Virginia.

Advertisement in LHJ for Gordon Van Tine/Wardway Homes

Wardway Home in Roanoke, VA

So reads a large advertisement in the 1912 issue of American Carpenter and Builder. I own a number of these architectural magazines from the early 1900s and the majority of advertisers offered products with a connection to the new and modern building miracle:  Concrete.

In 1867, Parisian gardener Joseph Monier was awarded a patent for reinforced concrete, which is concrete with embedded metal.

By the early 1900s, concrete became a hot item in the building trade. The rear pages of American Carpenter and Builder were filled with concrete products and concrete dry mixes and concrete mixers and concrete block makers. Concrete was big money. One of its biggest selling points was the fact that concrete was fireproof. In a time when fire was one of the great threats facing city residents and farm owners alike, creating a fireproof building was a big selling point.

As someone who loves to read old architectural magazines, I thought I’d seen it all - until I found this ad for concrete pine boxes. The ad promises, “Wooden boxes are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.”

Uh, it’s been almost 100 years since that statement was made and it hasn’t proven true.  “Wooden boxes” still abound.

I’d love to know how many contractors made money selling concrete caskets during the slow seasons of their building business.

Concrete pine boxes offer big profits (from 1912 American Carpenter and Builder Magazine)