On September 12 and 13, 1953, Marshall Erdman’s office and factory on University Avenue on the west side of Madison hosted a home improvement exposition. More than twenty-six local businesses and commercial vendors mounted displays and held demonstrations at this weekend-long “do-it-yourself” (DIY) showcase. Visitors learned how to hang wallpaper, lay flooring, finish a basement, and wield power tools. They also discovered how to assemble kitchen cabinets, build their own furniture, and even erect an entire house.1
At the time of the DIY show, Erdman was an ambitious, if relatively inexperienced, thirty-two-year-old builder seeking to expand his business. Having immigrated from Lithuania to the US at age seventeen, he had several years of homebuilding under his belt when he was hired in 1948 to work under Frank Lloyd Wright’s supervision as the contractor of the First Unitarian Society’s new Meeting House in the village of Shorewood Hills.2 Although Erdman had gone into debt to complete the project, the Meeting House garnered national attention, with write-ups in Architectural Forum, Life, and elsewhere.3 But by 1953, Erdman had returned to building middle-class houses in Madison’s west side suburbs and developed a factory-produced “do-it-yourself” kit called U-Form-It, which included all the materials needed for aspiring homeowners to build a three-bedroom home themselves.
As advertisements for the expo made clear, Erdman positioned his DIY house as a highlight. And although the idea of self-building was not in itself new or original, Erdman’s marketing of his model house as part of the do-it-yourself trend—where it stood alongside much smaller scale home remodeling and improvement projects—represented a bold and strategic move. Erdman set his do-it-yourself show against the backdrop of mid-twentieth-century DIY, enlisting the increasingly popular fad to mitigate any potential concerns about his factory-produced houses lacking individual character. His entrepreneurial DIY pitch allowed him to play down the mass-produced character of the houses while emphasizing the notion of individual agency and potential for customization, vaulting Erdman’s business to considerable success during the 1950s and beyond.
DIY in the US in the Twentieth Century
Madison’s DIY show was part of a broader middle-class enthusiasm for home improvement projects that had been steadily growing since the turn of the century. Beginning around 1900, homeownership rates began steadily increasing. This joined with growing leisure time for white middle-class families, who increasingly lived outside of the urban core in suburbs.4 Mass circulation magazines founded during the early twentieth century, such as Popular Mechanics (1902), House and Garden (1901), House Beautiful (1906), and Better Homes and Gardens (1922), started publishing articles on home improvement projects specifically for this audience. In addition, producers of “cheap, quick, and easy” materials for domestic spaces—such as asbestos asphalt shingles, gypsum board, and linoleum flooring—began peddling products directly to middle-class suburban consumers in the guise of home improvement.5
Prior to World War II, however, interest remained relatively limited. Lumber dealers marketing building supplies were still reluctant to cater to Consumers who could afford to remodel or improve still preferred to hire skilled professionals. The onset of the Great Depression prompted increasing numbers of Americans to consider doing their own work; the passage of the National Housing Act of 1934 provided guaranteed loans up to $2,000 to spur home improvement projects. Some homeowners took advantage of this, but DIY still was not widespread given that homeownership remained largely restricted to the upper middle class.
