BUILDING THE TOWNHOUSES
Recorded May, 1988
An Interview With:
Robert Tweedell
Harold Yost
Interviewed By:
Tom McDade
Jane Nicoll
BUILDING
THE TOWNHOUSES
May,
1988
Program
Participants:
Robert
Tweedell
Harold
Yost
Tom
McDade
Jane
Nicoll
[Videotaped at the Park Forest Public Library. Available on
VHS and on audiotape.]
TM: I'm Tom McDade. I live in Park Forest, and I
am the vice president of the Park Forest Historical Society and very much
interested in the community and its history. I live right down the street from
the library. I came back here after being away for some twenty-three years and
have been back here since '85 and love it. Those that helped make Park Forest
possible I think should be in our archives and in our memory, and we have two
gentlemen here who very much were involved in the earliest phase of Park Forest
-- the development of the three
thousand and ten then-rental townhouses. These are now largely cooperative with
some areas still rented by private owner. Harold Yost was one of the earliest
employees and was very important in the overall coordination of the
construction. Harold lives in Chicago Heights now. I think we'd still like to
cause him to come back to Park Forest. Harold, what was your job and when did
you come here?
Building
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HY: I came to Park Forest in October the 20th of
1947 as the assistant superintendent of new construction. I lived in Chicago
Heights until we had completed the first units for occupancy. Then I moved to
Bender Road in Park Forest, and I lived there for nine years after which I
bought a home in Chicago Heights and still reside there.
TM: And Bob Tweedell, what was your coming to
Park Forest and what did you do?
RT.: After the war, I worked for Morris Lapitas,
a chain store builder in New York, who was a friend of Nathan Manilow. I came
to Park Forest in the early part of 1946 and was in charge of the carpentry
work in Park Forest. My first job was making material take-offs of material
being used. I left Park Forest in December of 1949, shortly before the three
thousand ten units were completed. I went back to Rochester, New York, but now
I've returned to Park Forest where I've lived for the last twenty-two years.
TM: Harold, tell me more about what your work
was and give me some of your problems and some of your successes with those
problems.
HY: Well, before I came to Park Forest, I had
been associated with Dick Senior and Allan Harrison during the war with the
George A. Phillip Merritt Chapman Scott Corporation in Londonderry, Ireland,
and Stranraer, Scotland. I had various assignments in the two years that I
spent over there by handling all of the shipping, handling masonry for the tank
farms and some of the building of the docks on the Foyle River in Londonderry.
When I came back to the States, I took about two months'
Building
the Townhouses 3
vacation, and then went up to Davisville, Rhode
Island, where again I was associated with Dick Senior.
TM: What was Dick Senior's job in Park Forest?
HY: Dick Senior’s job in Park Forest was project
manager of construction.
TM: Does that mean he was the overall manager or
the superintendent -- he was the chief?
HY: Complete charge of the construction of Park
Forest.
TM: And you reported directly to him?
HY: Yes.
TM: And what was the future Park Forest like
when you came here?
HY: Well, when I came here it was a nice big
field with piles of top soil that had been stripped prior to my coming here.
And it was a great place for the kids to slide down and get mud on their pants
after a rain storm.
TM: That was after you had some occupancy.
HY: Yes.
Building
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TM: Now here it was post‑war. Many of the
able-bodied men were just returning from service all over the world. Were there
skills available to hire and cause this place to be built?
HY: Well, I would say offhand that the majority
of the people that we did hire had previous trade training, like carpenters and
brick layers. Of course, there were a number of local men who we had to put on
as carpenters in a hurry to build up Park Forest who were just handy with a
hand saw and a hammer and could drive nails. Those fellows usually were put on
a simple job that didn't take much brain work, but you could keep them busy.
The brick layers were originally handled by Bouchard Construction Company. Now
for him to get the amount of men that he needed was almost impossible. So what
he did, he got a lot of small contractors who had small gangs, and they gave
them certain areas to build, and in that way he was able to accumulate quite a
number of small organizations that he used to do the brick work. In addition he
had his own sections with his own brick layers. And I'd say that it worked out
quite well because we never were held up for the completion of masonry in order
to complete a home.
[RT: Finding plumbers was the biggest labor
problem. We used pipefitters who were just coming out of the Navy.]
TM: Well, Bob, you were in charge of the
carpentry operation here. You had no great difficulty finding the skills to do
it?
Building
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RT: No, we were very fortunate in finding as
many carpenters as we needed along with apprentices.
TM: You had a big operation going here. You
couldn't simply have hammer-and-nail fellows running around loose.
RT: No.
TM: And you certainly had enough standard
construction going on that you had to have some central carpentry operations.
RT: Well, we had the operation work out in crews
for parking lots. We had one crew that would come in and put on an entire first
floor with the decking. We had another crew that came in and raised the first
floor walls with the door frames and window frames, which was being
prefabricated in our sawmill.
TM: Oh, you established a sawmill operation
here?
RT: We had a
sawmill and we had ...
TM: What was the size of that? What was the
character of that?
RT: Our sawmill was approximately a hundred by
two hundred feet. We had Dewalt saws with the roller conveyor belts where we
could feed the lumber in from one end of the building, it would pass through
and make five cuts and come out the other end. We'd
Building
the Townhouses 6
build all of the trusses for the roofs in that
mill. We prefabricated all the door and window frames in that mill. [One of Mr.
Tweedell's tasks was to draw up the plans for the mill.]
TM: But, Bob, you were dealing then with
immediate post-war where lumber supply would appear to be a problem and the
character of the lumber would probably be a problem.
RT: At that time it was. The lumber was
furnished by the Edward Hines Lumber Company, who at that time was the only
supplier that could furnish the quantities of lumber we needed each day. [This
was the biggest lumber job ever let at one time in Chicago. Right after the
war, the lumber was very green. When the sun hit the studs, they would bow.
Twelve men and a carpenter replaced the bowed studs just before the lathe went
on. Edward Hines was the only company that could supply nails. This was also
one of the biggest plastering jobs done in housing, up to that time.]
TM: I believe that that matter of getting at
such a supply was exceedingly important for progress on the job. What was the
kind of quantity that was involved there, Harold Yost?
HY: To the best of my knowledge and
recollection, there was thirty million board feet of common lumber and six
million feet of trim lumber.
TN: What do you mean by common lumber?
Building
the Townhouses 7
HY: That's two by fours, two by tens, sheeting --
that which is known as common lumber. Common lumber is undressed lumber used
for joists and studs. The trim lumber is the finished lumber which was for
eaves of the roof or doorways, shelving, closets and so forth. At one time, we
took as much as thirty‑five truck loads of common lumber a day from
Edward Hines. [We were cutting a quarter of a million board feet of lumber per
day.]
TM: What'd you do with that? You couldn't leave
it out in the open fields?
HY: Oh, yes. That was common lumber. It went
through our mill. We would square off all of the two by fours, cut all of the
segments for the trusses, and fabricate them at our mill. The trusses then
would be delivered to the building site where they were taken off the truck and
hoisted by crane right on the roof. The cutting of the two by fours and
squaring them off and so forth. Each unit had a number and they were banded at
the mill and lifted by a fork lift all onto a storage area. So as we needed
them for certain areas, the fork lift loaded them onto a truck and dropped them
right at the buildings that they were going to in the different parking areas.
TM: Parking areas -- what became the parking
areas you mean?
HY: That's right.
TM: Courts, as we called them.
Building
the Townhouses 8
HY: We had made temporary parking areas out of
what was to become the final parking area by putting in slag and backing the
trucks in over that, so they wouldn't be getting stuck in the mud.
TM: Yes. Mud was pretty much your enemy
generally, wasn't it?
HY: Oh, yes.
TM: Bob, that makes me wonder what was this area
like when you first became acquainted with it as early as 1946.
RT: Well, when I first came out to the site, the
entire area was farmland and a golf course which existed after we started
construction for a while. We used the old clubhouse as part of our field
office. [In the early months we worked on engineering plans in the office
there.]
TM: Where was that clubhouse?
RT: The old clubhouse was off of Monee Road,
right out in the middle of farmland, which was a golf course.
TM: Was that course still in operation when you
first saw it here?
RT: The golf
course wasn't, no. The clubhouse had been closed down and just a
Building
the Townhouses 9
skeleton crew was remaining there for
maintenance. [The cook from the clubhouse was given room and board to cook
breakfast for the eighteen men working in that office.]
TM: There were no dwellings anywhere about. Were
there farmhouses?
RT: Several old farmhouses, yes.
JN: I thought this might be a good place to
introduce some photographs for the gentlemen to look at of the lumber that was
used. There are two pictures of what I believe is the sawmill and two of one of
the fork lifts lifting the lumber and one of the lumber outside of the yard.
[See photo file under "Architecture-Rental Units Construction" BL
copy neg Set 1, negatives #2a, #7, and #12.]
RT: This is in
the mill. [BL copy neg Set 1, neg #12.]
HY: Yes, that's in the mill.
RT: See the DeWalt saw on the conveyor table.
TM: Yes.
RT: That longer table is a roller, conveyor
table. This is also in the mill.
HY: There's the fork
lift stacking them. [BL copy neg Set 1, neg #7]
Building
the Townhouses 10
RT: That's at the mill. You see, the basic
framing lumber was delivered right to the sites. [BL copy neg Set 1, neg #2a]
TM: In other words,
here is building number three in area A or ...
RT: No. In each area we had a gasoline powered
saw and we cut the floor joists and we also had an electric generator for the
Skil saws. But the lumber delivered to the mill was the studs and lumber that
we prefabricated to go in window frames and trusses -- mostly the trusses. We
built all the trusses on the job site.
TM: Now, you had no electricity coming to the
site from a public utility, is that correct?
RT: Only to the mill. Nothing in the areas. We
had gasoline powered saws in the areas.
HY: That looks like the first unit.
RT: Yes.
JN: I have another small photograph of the
trusses waiting in a parking bay. Maybe the gentlemen could react to that. [BL
copy neg Set 1, neg #2a and #3a]
RT: Yes. Stacked.
Building
the Townhouses 11
TM: What was that construction? Was there first a
carpentry rough outline of the exterior of the unit?
RT: No, we used a raised wall construction, what
they call stick construction. You frame the walls flat on the deck and then
raise them in place.
TM: And was that all wood at that point?
RT: Everything was wood.
TM: And then was there any insulation provided?
RT: Only on the wall sheeting, exterior wall
sheeting.
TM: And what was that sheeting?
RT: If I can remember, I think it was U.S.G.
insulite.
TM: And then the last
operation for that before painting was the ...
RT: We had, you had part of the building was the
masonry walls and some was exterior siding. It was a variation. Some walls
would be brick and the others would be siding, depending on the different
units.
TM: That siding was put on course by course?
Building
the Townhouses 12
RT: No, it's [simultaneous speaker,
unintelligible]. Weather board and shingles and asbestos shingle.
TM: Did you ever calculate the number of units
completed per week per month?
RT: Only in the framing stage.
HY: I can answer that for you. At the peak of
construction, we were completing sixteen units per day.
TM: Pouring off the extended assembly line, huh?
HY: That is, turning sixteen units over to be
ready for rental, accepted and inspected by the FHA inspectors.
TM: Now, there must have been quite a crew of
FHA inspectors?
RT: There were six.
Chief inspector and six ...
HY: Five or six inspectors, yes.
TM: Did you get along?
HY: Very good, yes.
Building
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JN: Did you ever use one of these progress
charts?
HY: Yes.
RT: Yes. We had enough progress charts to paper
the walls in the building.
HY: We could have wallpapered the place with
them.
JN: Okay.
HY: That chart you’re looking at we used as a
daily progress sheet which came out for the buildings that were going to have
concrete foundations poured. Each day would be shown in a small section of a
plan similar to that.
TM: And you had no important construction
delays?
HY: No ...
TM: The weather was kind to you?
HY: Well, we had some pretty cold weather there
that one winter which was down around zero, which was quite cold and there was
some time that we just couldn't work. Not very often.
TM: What was the largest work force that was
here at any time?
Building
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HY: Carpenters, the maximum we had on in
carpenters was five hundred carpenters and three hundred and fifty laborers. On
the entire job the complete work force was about twenty‑three hundred men
at the peak of construction.
TM: Later you had your mechanical trades.
HY: Yes.
RT: You have to remember, this is before they
had the pneumatic hammers and staple guns, too.
TM: Yes, that made a difference.
RT: It was all hand.
TM: Back there in'46 it was quite a different
story. You had, you’ve said, only farm land about and very few structures of
any sort and the all the agricultural-type structures if any.
RT: Well, nowadays all of your framing is done
with a pneumatic hammer and nailers, and all of your sheeting's put on with a
staple gun and pressed through a staple gun. It makes a lot of difference.
TM: Now, you
had come out of the Navy during World War II ...
Building
the Townhouses 15
RT: It was the Seabees. The Construction
Battalions. [Mr. Tweedell was a Chief Petty Officer in the Construction
Battalions from 1945-46.]
TM: The Seabees. So you had more than a little
preparation for tackling a tough job.
RT: Yes. Well, I also worked with Army Corps of Engineers,
too, building bases in Kentucky.
TM: Earlier, Harold, you said you were involved
in construction in Scotland.
HY: Yes, I was
...
TM: Or was that Ireland?
HY: Ireland and
Scotland. I was associated with Allan Harrison and Dick Senior . . .
TM: Well, that's how you came together.
HY: That's how we had met. Dick Senior was my
boss that I reported directly to in Ireland. I was later transferred to the
Navy to work with the Navy directly.
TM: You worked some big jobs before this then
certainly.
HY: Oh, yes. Yes.
Building
the Townhouses 16
TM: In a job as large as this, you had obviously
progress charts, et cetera, but you were trying to reach a sequence of when
buildings were to come on line ready for occupancy. How did that sequence go in
Park Forest? You had these various areas all with the capital letter, such as A
Area, B Area, through to J Area. How did these come out for occupancy?
HY: They came out quite well. Bob and I would
sit many a night making up schedules until midnight. Sometimes we had to tell
somebody in Seattle, Washington, or Buffalo, New York, or Florida or some other
place in the country when they could move in. And sometimes we only had the
excavation done. We hadn't started the building yet. But nevertheless, we had
to give them a move-in date. I would say for a project this size, we met the
schedules quite well. I don't ever remember the office turning down anybody
from the date we had given to them to move in. And that was when we reached the
schedule of completing sixteen units a day.
TM: Now I know the first occupancy took place in
Court B-1.
HY: Correct.
TM: B Area, the first court which is immediately
to the east and north of the power lines and north of 26th Street and into area
B-1. Do you remember the first occupancy? Were you around at the time?
HY: Yes, it was in B-1 Area, the first
occupancy.
Building
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TM: Now, there is still a resident of Park
Forest who is considered to be the first resident of Park Forest.
HY: Are you referring to Ross DeLue?
TM: Yes.
HY: I believe that would be correct.
TM: You think that's
correct? Now, Phil Klutznick was an early resident of...
HY: The same area, B-1.
TM: Yes, and now, don’t you think that was
rather daring of Mr. Klutznick to move in right next to his new neighbors who
would have every reason to find problems in their initial occupancy?
HY: Well, I think that was the first time we
taught him in Park Forest how to get mud on his feet, because we only had duck
boards going into the house. No sidewalks were in yet, but Phil had a two‑unit
building which he occupied and they had broken through walls and made it into
one unit.
TM: Well, he had four children in there at the
time.
HY: Yes. He needed plenty of room.
Building
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TM: I don't think we could let him occupy any
unit otherwise. (laughs) Too large a family for the house. What area was the
first that was completed, ready for occupancy? Were they still in construction,
really, when a unit might be available to move in?
HY: Well, I'd say that B and E were the first
two areas that received occupants. [E area was the first excavation. We built
the first piece of ground October 28, 1947. The engineering work began only
with the building phase. The early phase was planing and leveling the ground.]
TM: And then do you recall how you completed in
sequence?
HY: Well, I can give you a sequence of the areas
as we progressed. We started with E, then B, C and D, H, F and G, A, and J.
TM: J being the last.
HY: The last.
TM: That was the one that was closest to the
shopping center. G Area, too.
HY: Now, this is forty years ago, so I hope my
memory is correct.
TM: Now, at that point in time there were no commercial
establishments here for families to get groceries or families to get the other
household needs.
Building
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RT: Chicago Heights was the closest contact.
TM: Do you recall when the first ability to have
shops in Park Forest took place?
HY: Well, the first building in the commercial
area, to the best of my knowledge now, was started shortly after we were
completing the J Area. In fact, J wasn't complete yet. And we had the
excavation in there. We had a running sand vein which gave us quite a problem.
TM: Where was that?
HY: On the east end of that shopping center. So
what we did, we dug down about four feet below the sub-grade, and we put in
slag from the steel mill. Then we poured grout, which we made up at our
concrete plant, dumped it over the slag, made it sort of a monolithic slab.
TM: Now, what would be the depth that you went
down to to do that? You spoke of sub-grade.
HY: If I remember right, it was around twelve
feet, I would say. Does that ring a bell to you, Bob?
RT: You mean to dig the foundation wall?
HY: On the commercial area -- it's around twelve
feet.
Building
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RT: I would say about twelve feet on commercial,
yes. We had a five-foot box on the rentals.
JN: Is that what you’re talking about or is that
above it? [BL copy neg Set 1, neg #18.]
RT: Then we had a, we'd have a knee wall on top
of that foundation wall yet. A knee wall is only three feet, though, I think.
TM: Better describe your terms. What do you mean
by knee wall?
RT: I'm trying to think. Did we have a knee wall
on these things?
HY: No, the foundation was poured -- the
foundation was poured by putting in the entire floor slab with a built-up beam
surrounding the slab.
RT: No, we didn't have any walls on that.
HY:
No, then you had ...
RT: Our framing went right on the wall plate.
HY: ... your concrete wall, which would have
been probably six-foot-ten, somewhere in that neighborhood.
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RT: Yes, the plates went right on the wall here.
HY: Yes, the wall went right on top of the slab.
RT: Yes, right on the plate there.
HY: There's no knee wall.
TM: Did you have any problem obtaining
sufficient concrete?
HY: No, not until we got to A Area, and at that
time we overran Corbetta on the foundations, and that's when we started to cut
back on our crews.
TM: In other words, the concrete people weren't
able to keep up with your other production and sequence.
HY: No, we were geared up quite high and were
able to catch them and make it economically.
TM: Was there a concrete plant right here on
site?
HY: Right on site.
TM: Where? Between the two railroads?
11
Building
the Townhouses 22
RT: No, they had their own batch plant set up
out on Western Avenue there.
HY: Right up by the railroad track.
JN: I have some photographs of the concrete
plant and the workings. Why don't we look at those? [BL copy neg Set 1, #4a]
HY: That's it.
RT: You see, as far as your construction
progress was concerned, when you make a construction progress you always allow
a certain few days for bad weather or holiday. Well, if you had a three-day
rain, that changed your entire schedule. You started over from scratch. If you
didn't have delivery of brickload in the area, the next day you'd change your
schedule again. If you didn't have a certain area of siding, you'd change your
schedule.
TM: Yes, I know. I
know ...
RT: So it's constant schedule, schedule,
schedule.
TM: I worked later with the construction
department in coordinating the final construction for the individual homes,
and, yes, I discovered at one time thirty-five significant operations in
building the house, and always you’d, for the ideal you threw in extra days.
You had to provide for material shortages, or trade problems or what have you.
Building
the Townhouses 23
RT: There's never been a time where everything
works as planned on paper.
HY: This picture shows exactly how the
foundation walls existed. [BL copy neg Set 1, neg #18]
JN: As you were discussing previously.
HY: That's right.
JN: Can you discuss a little bit about what's
happening there with the slabs and the cranes? [BL copy neg Set 1, negs #6a, 8,
9, 11]
HY: Which one is that?
JN: In this photo of the concrete plant.
HY: With this crane?
RT: That's the pre-cast yard, isn't it?
HY: This is the pre-cast yard. They were pouring
the pre-cast stoops, as you might call them.
TM: You mean
the front ...
Building
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HY: Front and back entrance.
TM: ... and back doors, where one stepped on --
they stooped on (laughs) to get in the door.
HY: That's right.
RT: This is all pre-cast.
TM: And those were all pre-cast?
HY: Those are all pre-cast.
TM: Now, what about those window wells? There
were several to every unit. What about those window wells?
RT: They were a headache from the beginning.
TM: Now, those were a, that's a, the steel frame-work
for those out of concrete with the ...
HY: They were fastened to the foundation wall.
RT: With an area wall nowadays, you have a drain
built into the area wall connected to your sewer. Those are nothing but holes
with a gravel bottom.
Building
the Townhouses 25
TM: Who came up with that idea?
RT: Well, that cut down on your excavation for
one thing and saved money. You had to save your money at the same time you're
delivering units, because you run on a budget with so many dollars to build the
units and that was it. You couldn't tell the government, "Hey, we need
another three million dollars," like they do nowadays. They've got a cost
overrun. There was no such thing as cost overrun. If you had a cost overrun,
you took a walk down the road the next day. So anything you could do to
conserve on costs but not cut down on your time. Delivery was what -- because
like I said, they had people who would be standing in line. Three hundred
people in a line waiting.
TM: You mean actually at the site looking at the
job going on?
RT: Yes. Wanting to go in and sign up for units.
TM: Did this interfere with your operation?
RT: Oh, no. No, this was isolated. But there
were certain standards and incentives. When Jack Rashkin and his sales crew
would sell two hundred and fifty houses from a Saturday to a Sunday night ...
TM: Well, you’re talking later operations.
RT: ... on the houses.
Building
the Townhouses 26
TM: You’re talking about later operations, yes.
Yes. I was involved in that delivery of those houses that you’re speaking of.
That was later in the operation. And the operation of the development of the
rental community -- I'm sure you have a vivid memory of much of this. What do
you gentlemen think was the reason for the wet basements in the rental units?
[This question and the answers are from a preliminary interview and do not
appear on any of the taped versions.]
RT: We used pre-cast concrete for the basements.
The bays were preset and could not be tied into the walls.
HY: There was also a high water table here. In
area C it was clay. It made a perfect bed -- hard as concrete, but beneath that
was peat. They planned for no drain tile in the basements. The area wells were
too full of water.
RT or HY: Everybody was fighting time.
TM: You fellows were involved with more than a
little material on this job. When I look at those three thousand and ten rental
units at that point, it must have been amazing amounts of materials and I find
an item here from the Park Forest
Reporter back in 1949, July 7 of '49, that sets forth some of the items
that you handled. There's a headline, "Bricks, Stone, Steel, Men Make Park
Forest Grow." It said, "All the bricks required to build Park Forest --
that's about thirteen million -- would stretch from New York City to
Dallas." The roads and foundations and sidewalks would require a hundred
thousand barrels of cement, and this could make a sidewalk from Chicago to
Kankakee, some fifty-seven miles at that time at least. I don't think
Building
the Townhouses 27
it's gotten any shorter. All the phases of
construction work, the organization of the work plan, the hiring of the vast
labor force -- nineteen hundred men at one point -- and enough steel to build a
sixteen-story building. And the flooring -- my goodness, the amount of wood.
Let's see, three million five hundred thousand square feet of wood. And inside
the units paint would cover one million four hundred thousand yards of plaster.
Those are enormous quantities, but I understand also that during this period of
time, you couldn't have a lock on any building project, and there were
shortages elsewhere. There were shortages in the general area -- people that
had good use for lumber, had good use for the appliances as they went into the
individual units. I understand that in one instance, I believe you told me
about some kitchen cabinets being delivered, Harold. Was it you that told me
that -- Bob? What happened to those cabinets that were being delivered? What
was the process?
RT: Well, that was an amazing thing. Going into
one of the courts would be a narrow driveway, probably twenty-five feet wide.
And the building on both sides of that was being worked on at the time by
siding crews. Probably six carpenters on each building within ten feet of the
drive. At eight-thirty in the morning, we had a flatbed truck and six laborers
go around the court and deliver kitchen cabinets for the units -- probably
thirty-five units in that court. By ten o'clock all the cabinets were gone, and
no one had seen anything. Nothing.
TM: (laughs) Strange
how they disappeared. (laughs)
RT: Yes, but we had many strange things. We got
a call one morning that there was a garage being built in Chicago Heights with
our windows. At the time, we were getting
Building
the Townhouses 28
short of windows. Harold and I went over and,
sure enough, here was a nice garage with six of our steel windows in it. We
could tell from the markings on the steel casing.
TM: Strange that they would
disappear and then, then so appear, right? (laughs)
RT: Another evening one of our laborers was
driving down 26th Street going back to Chicago Heights. He got a flat tire, so
he pulled over to the side of the road to fix his flat tire. One of the other
fellows stopped by to help him, and in so doing he looked in the back seat in
the back of the truck, and he had twelve kegs of nails in there. The young man
said, I found those nails on my way to work this morning. I forgot to return
them."
TM: (laughs) Yes, yes. Where did the steel
framings for the windows and doors come from?
HY: Vinester was doing the supplying and
installing the steel window frames. They worked, they came knocked down and
were assembled on the job by the employees of Vinester, who were ornamental
iron workers.
TM: That's a specialized trade, of course. Yes.
HY: That's right.
And they weren't a
permanent staff with you or were they permanent?
Building
the Townhouses 29
HY: No, they were subcontractors.
TM: Both of you were responsible for
coordinating such subcontractors, obviously.
HY: Yes.
RT: And see, the steel frame itself came in
fabricated, but they had steel surrounds. That was like a casing around the
windows. And that was applied at the job site, put together by the steel
workers.
HY: The ornamental iron workers.
TM: Quite a process, gentlemen. Quite a process.
Bob, I imagine that you had the brunt of the families first moving in, the
first families into an area that was still without the amenities of sidewalks.
I understand that the drinking water was delivered in jugs because the well had
not yet been approved by the state. I imagine that there might have been some
anxiety on the part of the families to get into their units from wherever they
were holed up in Chicagoland. I'm sure they'd be ever so grateful for you
delivering a unit to them regardless of its condition. I also hazard that that
gratitude didn't extend to any great degree. Is that right?
RT: That's right.
TM: Tell me what the reaction was.
Building
the Townhouses 30
RT: Well, a lot of these families were being
transferred into this location from out of state, and they were anxious to move
into the units. And we were just as anxious for them to move into the units.
They would promise that they were going to do this and do that, and they'd be
satisfied to move in. They'd put up with the mud and the dirt and the water and
the board walks, and they did for several days. Then they got anxious. They
forgot the promises. Rain didn't mean anything. If it rained two days, they
could care less. They wanted sidewalks, they wanted landscaping, and they
wanted water. And we tried our best to give it to them as quick as we could. In
some cases we couldn't, so we
TM: They blamed you for all this, did they, Bob?
RT: Well, no, they blamed everyone in general. I
think they blamed God if it rained, you know.
TM: (laughs) So Muddville prevailed for a little
while. What did you do to take care of those situations? Really, what could you
do?
RT: We built what they called commonly in
construction a duckwalk. That's like a picket fence laid down on the ground to
walk on. And I think we built something like forty-two truck loads of these
duckwalks, and we'd keep moving them constantly. We'd have them down, and if a
sewer line had to go through, the duckwalks had to be moved and put back down
again. Sometimes they weren't put down fast enough, and if not, you walked in
mud.
Building
the Townhouses 31
TM: When was the first occupancy? Do you know
approximately when?
RT: I don't know the exact date of first
occupancy.
TM: And how long was it before you were able to
get the sidewalks and landscaping in?
RT: To the best of my recollection, I would say
no one went more than thirty days after they moved in without a walk.
TM: A duckwalk maybe.
RT: Yes. But you know, it's funny in a way. I
was living in Chicago, and I would meet people over at the I.C. platform in the
morning talking and they would be talking about what a great place it was to
live in Park Forest. They'd get home that evening and start yelling because
they didn't have a walk to walk on.
HY: I believe the first occupancy was around
September of '49.
JN: I have September 1948 on this first occupied
building.
RT: It was still good weather, clement weather
yet.
HY: Yes. I believe that was the first occupant.
Building
the Townhouses 32
JN: I have a list of the residents in those, and
this side of the court was Mr. Klutznick, Saitta, Heckman, Kanter and
Laudermill.
RT: Well, Phil Klutznick walked on a duckwalk,
too.
JN: Yes, this photograph was taken after the
sidewalks were put in. [BL copy neg Set 1, negs #14 and #15]
RT: Yes, he didn't get any walks any faster than
anybody else.
JN: No.
HY: Well, what happened in that case as far as
the sidewalks was concerned and curbs, I believe they were originally
Corbetta's contract. But Corbetta was not anxious to do sidewalks and curbs
because they were used to doing structural building. And they sublet the
sidewalks and curbs to an outfit from Chicago -- I believe their name was
Salsey.
RT: Yes, Salsey.
HY: Who was very used to doing that type of
work. And they would do thousands and thousands of feet a day of curb and
sidewalks. Quite fast in catching up with the occupancy.
Building
the Townhouses 33
TM: There were some sample homes built probably
while you still were here, some possible models for future construction on Sauk
Trail. Were you involved, either of you, in those houses?
RT: That was after we left.
HY: That must have been the single-family homes.
TM: Yes. Yes. Were you here when Hines built the
possible model [home] on 26th Street?
HY: The little red schoolhouse?
TM: The little white schoolhouse I think it was,
wasn't it?
HY: Well, they called it "the little red
schoolhouse".
TM: Were you involved in that construction? What
was your role in that?
HY: I don't know. [Said to RT] Did you supply
the carpenters to them or not?
RT: Yes. Hines had the idea that if they could
sell these prefabs, they would use the prefabs in the construction of the
houses, it would work out successfully. They had about ten different ideas to
use, and Hines happened to come up with this one. But our carpenters erected
the package for them. It was a nice house.
Building
the Townhouses 34
TM: That later became a nursery school and it
was about the only place for public assembly.
RT: It was. It had a meeting room.
TM: And I believe that some of the planning to
incorporate the community happened there after the famous tent meeting in
November, 1948.
RT: I think that was the first nursery school
for the tenants.
HY: And I can remember sitting in that building
with Dick Senior, Phil Klutznick and listening to the gripes of all the tenants
at the meetings. Dick Senior and Phil Klutznick, of course, were professionals
at talking them out of feeling too bad about what they had to complain about.
And when the meeting was over, everybody seemed to go home happy. They weren't
as mad as when they came. [END SIDE A]
[SIDE B] JN: How often were those meetings held?
HY: About once a week. That was one too many.
TM: Incidentally, I do want to mention someone
that was very important in the development of the community -- Charlie
Waldmann. His wife operated that nursery school in that Hines model home.
Building
the Townhouses 35
HY: That's correct.
TM:
We worked together later with Chicago Housing Authority. Charlie came aboard as
director
of development when we were working on a new program with some forty
thousand
CHA dwellings. And he was a wonderful man to work with. He was a very
inspiring
man, particularly to young professionals, and had great ideas. He had
separate
degrees in electrical, civil and mechanical engineering. And he caused the
underground
for Park Forest -- not sinister, but the fact that our electric wires and
telephone
cables all went underground. This is how it came about, as I understand.
Remember
there was a great shortage of gas permits and you could get underground
wiring
for electricity, but at an exorbitant cost. The telephones, of course, had
underground
for electric. It was no great difficulty to go with the
telephone
cables underground. It could be done, but the charge was just absolutely
impossible
to accomplish in the kind of rental rates that were to come. Over one
weekend,
Charlie Waldmann prepared, sketched, did the proposal for a plan by which we
would
have a total energy plant in Park Forest. We would produce our own gas and
produce
our own electricity. Well, on the following week he arranged a meeting with
the
two utilities and a strange thing happened. All at once we got three thousand
gas
permits. Otherwise, we would have been treated unit by unit at the will of the
utility
companies. And we got the underground electricity and underground wiling.
And
I think we will always owe a debt of gratitude to Charlie Waldmann, I think the
last
of the renaissance men that I've known.
RT: The underground transformers weren't too
successful. They had to bring them above ground -- the transformers. Now, the
first ones were, they were a headache.
Building
the Townhouses 36
JN: Could we look at the large photographs and
just identify some areas and point out the sawmill?
RT: We were trying to do that.
HY: Here is the sawmill right here. Here we're
looking at D and C Area. [Neg 1. Large aerial #3 and BL Neg Set 2, neg #20]
TM: And therefore the sawmill was immediately on
Western Avenue.
HY: Right off Western Avenue.
RT: I keep looking at that, though, Harold, and
I'm not sure either.
JN: When was the carpentry shop set up?
RT: We had more of an area around the mill and
that, though?
HY: Oh, yes, but this picture doesn't show it.
RT: It's hard to see there.
HY:
That picture doesn't show all of it.
[Missing word] was back here where we
stockpiled.
Building
the Townhouses 37
TM: That in general was the vicinity of where
your central carpentry operation took place.
HY: See the area is not shown in this picture.
This shows just breaking off at the back of the mill. Right back here was all
vacant property.
RT: That might have been the trim shed for the
trim, too. That big black shed there.
JN: When was the carpentry shop set up?
HY: Just prior to before we started to do
carpentry work.
JN: Like '47?
HY: Yes, late'47.
JN: Late '47, you think?
RT: It would be late '47.
JN: Okay. Let me hold this up for the record.
RT: Because we started off running the mill in
the wintertime. There was snow on the ground.
Building
the Townhouses 38
HY: Yes, because we put the first foundation in starting
with October the 28th and there was a couple of days for excavation, and then
they started concrete. So by the end of that year we would have been framing.
TM: So within a year you were giving occupancy,
is that right?
RT: We thought at first we could operate that
mill in the wintertime without heat. We found out we couldn't do that.
TM: Let me see that other one there. This shows
Victory Boulevard for one thing, doesn't it? Yes. And this is G Area here.
JN: And the stockpile of lumber over to the
side. You might want to hold that up.
TM: Is that lumber?
JN: Or is that concrete?
RT: We wouldn't stand much lumber in one place
like that.
HY: No, it almost looks like pre-cast.
RT: Could be pre-cast section. No, we never had
lumber like that in one place.
HY: It could be pre-cast sections.
Building
the Townhouses 39
JN: Okay, that makes sense. Let's hold that up
so you can show that. Talking about this pile here.
RT: We tried to keep the storage of lumber to a minimum
on the site on account of theft.
JN: Right.
TM: Now, you were the physical construction
people primarily out in the field, and you had, of course, a lot of white-collar
workers that were a part of the operation, too -- the ACB senior personnel. And
I'm sure that Phil Klutznick was looking at the job from time to time. And
Nathan Manilow and Sam Beber, all officers of ACB, American Community Builders.
It was often said here that the kids learned their ACBs before they learned
their ABCs.
RT: We had a lot of discharged vets working for
us, too.
TM: Yes, yes.
RT: Just came out of the war.
TM: Yes. Now, Nathan Manilow probably came into
the field more frequently than the others.
Building
the Townhouses 40
HY: That's correct. [I never had a cross word
with Nathan Manilow on the whole job. Manilow was a field man. Klutznick was a
genius in the office.]
RT: We'd see quite a bit of Phil [Klutznick],
too, though.
TM: Yes, I'm sure you did. Yes. And then Loebl was
also a part of ACB, Jerrold Loebl, who was a partner of Loebl Schlossman and
Bennett, the architects for the rental community. And Dick Bennett I'm sure
came around from time to time also. Dick Bennett was the designer, I believe,
of the rental units, later of the shopping plaza. Did Dick Bennett come into
the field with any frequency?
HY: Not too often. Not very much. In fact, none
of the architects really come into the field very much. There was really no
need for them. We had a plan ...
RT: If you see something to change, change it.
HY: ... and buildings and once you build one,
you build the rest of the job.
JN: Could each of you describe your typical day
on the site?
HY: Yes, it started at seven o'clock in the
morning and finished up about eleven or twelve at night.
RT: Work.
Building
the Townhouses 41
JN: Right.
HY: Well, . . .
TM: I have seen Harold in the midst of other
jobs. Our paths crossed in the successor to ACB which was Urban Investment
Development that built Water Tower Place and 333 West Wacker, that curved
glass, green glass-fronted building right at the divergence of the Chicago
River and is now building the 900 North Michigan building. And from the little
operation in Park Forest, Urban went on to build seven regional centers around
Chicago, including Old Orchard being the first one. And I used to fly by
helicopter from Victory Boulevard to the roof of the Marshall Field store at
Old Orchard, which was the first of the seven. Eventually Urban grew from coast
to coast and border to border with Seattle, Washington, and a company in Boston
and projects in California.
HY: Denver.
TM: Denver. Denver, very important -- downtown
Denver we built four blocks.
HY: Philadelphia.
TM: And Philadelphia, and also we built a new
community north of Denver called Mountebello (?) near the Stapleton Airport. So
we learned a little bit, at least the corporation learned a little bit about
building Park Forest that they were able to apply in many places. And these
gentlemen, of course, also developed further in
Building
the Townhouses 42
their careers. You've already mentioned some of
the places that you've been involved with and ...
JN: Let's backtrack and finish the daily operation.
You didn't describe it earlier.
TM: Oh, yes.
HY: Well, Bob and I would always begin early in
the morning, and as I told you before, we had little sketches of a section of
an area showing the different buildings, what was going to be poured each day. “N”
would be slabs, "B" would be the exterior foundation walls. When the
exterior foundation walls were stripped, they would put in the cross walls in
the basement. When the cross walls were all in and the steel erected in the
basement, then they would backfill the buildings and the carpentry work would
start. Now, after setting up our daily routines from these little drawings,
we'd both be in the field -- he in one direction, me in another direction.
Bob's principal job was to watch the carpentry. I had to not only watch what
was going on in the way of carpentry, but figure for the other subcontractors
to be in there on time, have sufficient men on the job to keep up with our
progress. I can truthfully say the subcontractors that we had did an excellent
job in supplying men and never holding us up to any extent. They had very
competent supervision. [It was a job that comes once in a man's lifetime.]
[sound fades out]
END SIDE B