Underground House

By Bruce Shawkey

UNDERGROUND WORLD HOME 


Something really different in housing is displayed here: a three-bedroom house. completely below ground level. It is presented as the forerunner of dwellings that the builder says have marked advantages for today's living. Guides explain during the 20-minute tour why underground homes can provide more control over air, climate and noise than conventional houses — as well as protection from such hazards as fire and radiation fallout. The house occupies most of the area inside a rectangular concrete shell, the top of which is two and a half feet underground; a wide staircase brings visitors down to the front door. Windows in the house face scenic murals placed on the walls of the shell. * Admission: $1.00. 

As the name implies, it was truly underground, making it one of the least seen exhibits at the Fair. Not only couldn’t you see it just by walking by, but there was an admission charge to tour the home, and it couldn’t handle large crowds. As a result, most Fair visitors just passed it by without a second thought.

If they had taken the time to go downstairs for a look, they would have found a complete home, furnished and ready for occupants. How this house buried in the Earth came to be has its beginnings in the nervousness and paranoia of the Cold War. In the late 1950s, the city of Plainview, Texas asked for bids on a prototype bomb shelter, intending to develop an affordable way for its citizens to survive a nuclear blast. The contract was won by Jay Swayze, a local builder, who went on to construct an austere 6 foot x 8 foot bunker designed to house six inhabitants until it was safe to return to the surface.

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This was clearly an idea that was ahead of its time. Underground homes would not make a resurgence until 20 years later in the 1980s. And they were modified by this time by having a south facing wall of windows to capture sunlight for lighting and solar heating. No attention was paid to the notion that the homes were safe from a nuclear blast. Here's one in Dane County that I did a story on for the Wisconsin State Journal:



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