When the buyers of the tiny, 1,000 square-foot, mid-century modern house that sat on five acres of land off of George Hull Hill Road in Redding first looked at the property in 2014, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume they looked at the dwelling as expendable. With only one bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and combination living room/dining room area, it certainly didn’t meet the needs of a modern family for a primary residence.
The house was a prime example of a low-cost prefabricated kit home that was popular in post-WWII America during the 1950’s and 60’s. Marketed as the Concord 440, the house was manufactured by Techbuilt, Inc, a company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1953 by architect Carl Koch, a Harvard School of Design graduate who saw the need for inexpensive homes to accommodate the growing number of families headed by veterans of the war. In all, the company offered 22 different models that could each be slightly customized at the factory to meet the needs and desires of the customer and the lot on which it would be erected.
In 1961, the then 17.53-acre property was purchased by Lotte Fields, a Jewish immigrant who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939, and later, emigrated to the United States. She and her husband Henry, a successful woolen merchant, resided on Central Park South in Manhattan, and were looking for a country retreat within an easy drive of the city. Lotte was a Wellsley College graduate who worked at the United Nations as an economics affairs officer after the war and later as a financial advisor for the Girl Scouts of America. But Lotte’s real passion was reading, and the Redding house was designed as a literary retreat with built-in bookshelves and long couches on either side of the massive stone fireplace that was the focal point of the tiny home’s interior space.
Thanks to the provisions of Redding’s Demolition Delay Ordinance that was enacted in 2013, when the new owners applied for a permit to partially demolish the 1961 house so that they could erect a more livable 3,700 square foot, multi-level, three-bedroom home on the site, well over a dozen photographs were taken by the town’s then historic building consultants, Stuart Reeve and Kathleen Von Jena. In addition, the pair was able to acquire copies of the original invoices and drawings from Techbuilt and the company that erected the home in 1961.
Henry Fields passed away in 1991, but Lotte survived until 2013. Lotte bequeathed nearly 22 acres of her land to the Redding Land Trust, but the world was shocked to discover that she had bestowed a much larger gift to the New York Public Library. The woman who loved reading at her modest Redding retreat left $6,000,000 to the NYPL. The executor of her estate explained the massive gift: “One of her great joys was spending the weekend reading with her husband. Her donation shows just how much Lotte loved books and how important she felt it was to support her fellow book lovers.”
History is everywhere and it’s happening every day. What some people might not think important or worth saving today, may turn out to be impossible to find in the not-so-distance future. Tiny, post-war prefabricated homes like the one at 48 George Hull Hill Road have all but outlived their original purpose and have either completely disappeared or been so altered as to be totally unrecognizable today. The Redding CT History Project is committed to maintaining and sharing the wonderful work of fellow historians like Stu and Kathleen by keeping it alive and readily available.
There are several of these post-war prefabricated houses in Easton that should be documented. Of particular interest are any kit-homes that are made of steel or aluminum. The Historical Society of Easton is looking for information and older photographs that can help us in producing a record of the history of some of these less than obvious vintage buildings that should be considered for addition to the town’s Historic Resources Inventory list that was first established in the late 1990’s.
Anyone with first-hand knowledge of these structures is urged to contact us at: hsectresearch@gmail.com. We are especially interested in any construction photographs, newspaper or magazine articles, and any invoices or brochures. Some of these homes were marketed at places like the annual Danbury Fair. We don’t need to keep anything; we can simply scan it and hand it right back. We have portable scanners and laptops that will work anywhere.
Photos and documentation of the Redding house supplied by Stuart Reeve and Kathleen Von Jena from their 2014 field visit report.
