Yet another trip down a rabbit hole courtesy of a random trip to a National Park Service web page: 1906 Earthquake Cottages. Just a reminder: as awful as that earthquake was, a lot of the worst damage to smaller buildings – wood-framed houses, for example – came from the fires that followed the quake. A lot of people were temporarily without housing in a city where every building had to be treated as potentially dangerous. Enter the cottages, miniature houses built of 2xs and plank that could be quickly:
Photos of the temporary refugee camps show a lot of canvas tents, both traditional gable style and in a round center-pole style that looks like a miniature circus tent, as well as the cottages. Looking at the pictures, It is not a surprise to read that most of the camps were managed by the army. It is also not a surprise to hear that people moved the cottages from the camps to empty ordinary lots, to continue using them as houses. If you had lost everything to the quake or fire, having an actual building you could use as a house must have seemed like the best chance at recovering normality.
Amazingly, some of these buildings have survived, presumably with some modifications, and are still being used today: The Earthshaking History of San Francisco’s Quake Shacks.
It may be that this is all well known in California, in which case there’s nothing I can do but apologize for my ignorance and fascination.
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