What did a typical 1950s suburban house look like? Feast your eyes on this fab prefab home built in 1958

When post-WWII prefab housing was becoming passe, in the ’50s, a new version of the prefab home emerged — the kind of home with many of the mid-century modern design ideas that would become popular over the next decade.

Here’s a tour of one of these classic 1950s suburban homes — definitely an idealized middle- to upper-middle-class house — although that was the group that seemed to most often build new prefabricated residences out in the suburbs.

If you’re looking for other ’50s home styles, see inside a small house in ’50s San Francisco, or a look at a newly-built luxury-on-a-budget home from the 1950s.

For front views & floor plans of dozens of retro homes, check out , and 130 vintage ’50s house plans used to build millions of mid-century homes we still live in today.

What did a typical upper-middle-class 1950s prefab home look like? It could look like this.

Look what’s happening to prefabs! (1958)

By Evan Frances and Joseph B Mason, Family Circle – February 1958

Will you ever forget Baby’s first faltering steps and how excited you became? Well, that’s how it was with house-hungry folks at their first sight of a post-war prefabricated home.

No matter that its various parts had been mass-produced by assembly-line methods, the assembled house meant home — immediately available and low-priced — to thousands of just-married and together-at-last couples who yearned for warm family living after the lonely war years.

And so the postwar prefab, humble and unimaginative as it was, was gobbled up eagerly.

But like Baby who grew steadily into his first manful strides, the prefab grew up… and out… and bigger… and handsomer, until today it can look as individual and as important as the best-designed custom home.

Take, for example, the impressive prefab shown on these pages. Based on an original design scheme of the famous architect Minoru Yamasaki, manufactured by the Modern Homes Corporation of Dearborn, Michigan, and built in Livonia, Michigan, in 60 days by Slavik Builders of Detroit.

It is as far a cry from the die-cut rigid prefab of yesteryear as Baby’s toddling is from his sure-footed sprints for the school bus these days.

Here is a prefab with built-in flexibility in its concept, the purpose of which is to let you help plan your own home to suit your family’s needs and way of living.

Yamasaki’s system recognizes two centers of family life — one for living, the other for sleeping. These units are separate, but positioned for easy interconnection to form a complete core for daytime and nighttime use.

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Upper-middle class retro living: A 1950s prefab home front exterior

Double entry-door and large planter add luxury note to a prefab

See this 1950s prefab home’s floorplan

This floor plan shows upper level with 1,634 square feet of living space. Lower level (right) adds 600 more.

Theprefab home was common in the suburbs

In the Yamasaki-designed prefab shown here, there is the “living” unit consisting of upper-level living room, dining area, kitchen, dinette (or under-Mom’s-eyes play area), lower-level family room and laundry and utility-workshop. And then there is the “sleeping” unit consisting of bedrooms and baths.

The prefabricator of this home offers three basic living units and three basic sleeping units in different sizes to choose from and combine to give you any one of nine basic floor plans. These can be flipped left or right or back to front for an infinite variety of plans.

Are there teenagers in your family who want good-size bedrooms for sleep, study, hobbies, and overnight guests? And does your family like to gather for gabfests in the kitchen?

Then you can choose a prefab home with four ample bedrooms in the sleeping unit combined with a minimum living room and maximum kitchen in the living unit.

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Does your family do a heap of entertaining? Then you may decide on an arrangement with a maximum living unit coupled with a sleeping unit of minimum bedrooms.

What’s more, you can have the units combined with full- or half-basem*nt, lower living area, carport or garage, and patios… and arranged horizontally or vertically to take best advantage of your site, whether flat, sloping, narrow, or wide.

Add these components — flexibility of floor plan… site plan… size… orientation — and it is easy to see why this kind of planning may be the answer to your prayer for a home-as-you-like-it at a reasonable price!

Kitchen & dinette in a 1950s suburban house

Half of home’s upper “living” unit includes entry, dinette, kitchen, and lavatory. Wall facing these areas (which is other side of living room wall) contains built-in shelves, a desk niche, and a wall oven.

DON’T MISS: Tour the ultimate mid-century modern house: The Scholz Mark 58 Home of the Year

Downstairs family room with mid-century interior decor

The family room makes this prefab truly a home for private lives.

With its acoustical-tile ceiling and its placement in lower level (below “living” and away from “sleeping” unit of house), teenagers like Jackie and Loretta Rhodes (below) could stage a pajama party for the senior class without disturbing their napping little sister or their book-reading parents upstairs.

Rear view of this 1950s suburban house

Upper and lower “living” areas are at the right of brick fireplace wall; sleeping unit is at left. (Lower level is the basem*nt room shown above.)

ALSO SEE: 25 beautiful mid-century entrance halls invite you inside with vintage style

Opposite end of the mid-century modern living room

Mrs James Rhodes and daughter Debra love the open-air look of the room, achieved largely with sparsely-adorned white walls.

Stairs, beyond dining table, lead to the lower-level family room.

ALSO SEETour the ultimate mid-century modern house: The Scholz Mark 58 Home of the Year

The four bedrooms in 1950s prefab home

Bedroom/den/guest room

10 Responses

This is not typical – this is an upper middle class home – no one I know lived like this
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1. I wish there were “LIKE” symbols here so I could give one to your comment! I was disappointed when they said this was upper middle class after leading me on with this article being about 1950’s houses in general. Houses in my and my relative’s working class homes built in the 1950’s did not look like these.
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2. This is exactly like most people I knew had. And I would count this as solidly middle class, not upper middle.
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  1. I guess we were lower class and I never knew it! We lived nicely but not in such a huge home.
OUR BLACK HOMES DID LOOK LIKE THIS EITHER
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I’m a late 80’s baby, I’m in love with how people would dress going into town, how houses looked, these colors are amazing!!!!! People may have not been lucky to experience this. I lived in the ghetto of Detroit growing up. I still enjoy looking at things such as this. I’ve also notice how people sound and words we don’t use as much!! Great photos…
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Another comment I wish I could hit a “LIKE” button for! Most whites weren’t upper middle class back then either!
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My dad was a school teacher and my mom was a secretary, so we weren’t upper class. I grew up in a prefab three-bedroom smaller house, sort of a cape cod one story. Most of our furniture was maple wood, Early American, and my dad had a Lazy Boy vibrating recliner — his pride and joy lol!
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1. My mom still has her Early American maple wood dining set and I’m about to inherit it. I have no idea what to do with it. It’s so well made but it’s not my style, not even my vintage style. I have noticed a distinct lack of that style in the homes shown on Click Americana, though.
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This would have been considered rich by my lower mid family.
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What did a typical 1950s suburban house look like? Feast your eyes on this fab prefab home built in 1958 - Click Americana (2024)