STRENGS GO PREFAB
Not a high point in their career, the Strengs'
factory-builts were more than a mere challenge

From the pages of the CA-Modern magazine
By David Weinstein

To many modern architects, manufactured houses are a vision -- factory-built but custom-designed, affordable yet stylish, an elegant solution for the housing crisis affecting working and middle-class people worldwide.

For architect Carter Sparks, manufactured houses were real -- perhaps all too real, particleboard and plastic pipes and all. In the mid-1980s, working for the Streng Bros. developers, Sparks designed two communities of several dozen prefabricated houses in the Sacramento Valley.

The experience suggests that the success of prefabs, manufactured homes, or factory-builts -- call them what you will, except 'trailers' -- depends as much on execution as on vision.

"Carter looked forward to it as an opportunity to provide his designed homes at a lower price to people who couldn't afford his other houses." says Jim Streng, who ran the firm with his brother Bill for 30 years beginning in 1959. The Strengs, who succeeded in bringing modern architect-designed tract homes to the Central Valley, figured they could do the same with manufactured homes.

The Strengs don't regard the prefabs as their finest hour. "They didn't look good," Bill says, "and they didn't sell well." "We took low bidder," Jim says, "and we got what we paid for. I guess they were not well built."

"They were mobile homes," Jim concedes. "They came in on a trailer. We removed the wheels and set them on the foundation. They're really mobile homes." Bill adds: "Carter made them less bad than other manufactured houses."

The Strengs regarded the project as a failure primarily because of slow sales and poor quality construction. They also felt that aesthetically, they never achieved that true, Carter Sparks look. Plans to complete both neighborhoods with hundreds more of the manufactured house halted. In both neighborhoods, remaining lots were filled with conventionally built houses.

The two neighborhoods, however -- in Rio Linda, an unincorporated town north of Sacramento, and in the Presidents Park subdivision of Woodland -- remain well-kept. They still play the same role in the housing market as when they were new, and attract the same sort of people -- blue collar and service workers, and entry-level buyers.

James Hatch, an original owner from 1986 who remains in his Presidents Park home, remembers why he bought -- price. Most owners say the same. "I told my wife we couldn't afford a house," Hatch says. "My wife looked into it. She said our house payments are going to be a dollar more than what we're paying for rent."

"We liked the neighborhood," says Melissa Ditler, who moved to Presidents Park 12 years ago with her husband, "and it was a price we could afford."

But Sparks, a highly regarded Sacramento modernist, did succeed in providing the prefabs with some of his distinctive touches, and in disguising their basic nature. "It feels like a regular house inside," Hatch says.

Walking through the neighborhoods, you'd never think you're in a mobile home park. Once the Strengs stopped importing prefabs, ranch-style houses filled the remaining lots. Both the ranches and the prefabs share similar lines -- low gables, side garages -- so they form a coherent streetscape.

It's not always easy to identify the Streng prefabs because many have been remodeled. Clues are the standard Streng vertically grooved plywood siding, a breezeway found between the manufactured home and its conventionally built one-car garage, and a low concrete foundation. Although the narrow end of the house faces the street, the breezeway-garage combination produces a suburban, ranch-like appearance.

Sparks did what he could to give his manufactured homes the same look as his standard Streng houses, which had walls of glass opening to the backyard, slab-on-grade construction for indoor-outdoor flow, open-beam interiors, tall ceilings and interior 'atriums' -- informal areas with plantings beneath a skylight.

None of that could be accomplished in the manufactured houses, which were stick-built in the factory, with 2x6 lumber for exterior framing and 2x3s for the interior, instead of the Strengs' usual post-and-beam construction.

Instead of glass walls to the backyard, Sparks provided a sliding glass door, or a pair of sliders for the double-wides. Because the houses are raised on foundations, however, the indoor-outdoor flow was less evident, Jim notes.

Although the houses, which ranged from 800 to about 1,400 square feet, had no room for atriums, the covered, open-beamed breezeway provides a pleasant alternative.

Inside, Sparks managed to provide some modernist drama, with tall, single-sloped shed ceilings in single-wides, and vaulted ceilings (where the two sheds come together) in double-wides. Sparks emphasized the sloped roofline, repeating the shape in the clerestory windows.

Living-dining areas, which are just to the right of the front door, have a surprisingly spacious feeling. "This is really what sold us," Richard Klein says of his living room. The Kleins are original owners in Woodland.

The floor plan is simple -- open living area to one side of the front door, with a small kitchen half open to the living area. A narrow hallway leads to two or three bedrooms and one or two bathrooms.

Despite their modern touches, Sparks' manufactured houses look so little like the classic tract houses he designed for the Strengs that Melissa Ditler, who grew up in a Streng house nearby, never suspected that her manufactured home in Woodland was also a Streng.

Fans of modern style haven't flocked to the Streng manufactured houses. That, of course, was never the idea. "At that time we were a union builder and most of our competitors were going non-union," Jim says. "We felt we couldn't go no-union. But by going manufactured, we felt we could circumvent the union and have a product that would be competitive with the non-union stick builder."

In Presidents' Park, the houses sold in the $70,000 range, which was less than comparable stick-built houses -- but not by enough, the Strengs say. "Our prices, by the time we put them on the foundation and added garages, were not much less than the 'stick builders' in the area, and the quality was not as good," Jim Streng says. It took longer than expected to receive the houses from the factory, Bill adds, and once the houses were delivered "we had to fix things."

Besides using an architect to design the homes, the Strengs sold them with the lot included. "Our thought was that trailer parks give the buyer the worst of all possible deals," Bill says, "because they buy the part that wears out, the house, and the part that appreciates, the lot, they rent. Our idea was to sell them the lot and attach the house to a real foundation so the house is real property, not personal property."

Streng Bros., who were always known for customizing their plans, maintained that practice with their manufactured homes. "The Strengs offered choices," says Hatch's wife, Nonie, "but they didn't want you to know about them."

Their house has a freestanding wood-burning stove, as shown in the model home. But it doesn't have the clerestory glass over the sliding doors because the Hatches didn't know that feature was offered, she says.

For Jack Dobbins, a trucker, the Strengs built a house with no breezeway. And for a neighbor of the Hatches in Woodland, the Strengs included a five-foot-round fire pit in the center of the living room.

Dobbins is thankful he chose another upgrade -- a plywood floor, not standard particleboard. "You know what happens when it becomes wet?" his wife Margaret says of particleboard. "It becomes mulch." That's exactly what happened in many houses when the plastic plumbing burst. Owners also complain about poor construction, leaky roofs, and sound insulation. "Especially when my son plays his bass," Richard Klein says, "boom, boom, boom!"

The manufactured homes were among the last projects the Strengs worked on together. "This was about the time I was abandoning Bill to go with the county," says Jim, who was elected a Sacramento County supervisor.

In retrospect, Bill says, they could have succeeded with manufactured houses if they had a better quality product. That's one reason he believes a similar venture could succeed today. Manufacturers produce better homes. In a factory, as opposed to a conventional job site, he adds, "Quality should be easier to control because you have the same people doing it over and over."

Bill also suggests that modular housing today more closely resembles the conventionally built competition. "Lots of lower-end houses are attached, so they are almost by definition rectangular," he says, "which the manufactured houses are also."

"It seems to me manufactured houses should be able to compete on an even basis, and have more buyer-acceptance today," Bill says, adding, "So yeah, they may come into their own one of these days."

Mobile homes, he notes, have an even bigger cost advantage in remote sites, where costs are high to truck in materials and men. Manufactured homes also have a greater appeal today to fans of modernism -- unlike the 1980s when, as Jim Streng notes, "People who live in mobile home parks didn't appreciate modern architecture." Today, with books and magazines proclaiming their virtues, manufactured homes are starting to appeal to people who want chic more than cheap.

The Streng manufactured homes may have failed as a business venture, but people still appreciate them. Linda Morgan, who moved into her Rio Linda single-wide a year ago (next to her son, who lives in what she calls "a real house"), wishes she had a dining room. But she appreciates the breezeway, the openness, and the layout. "It's kind of cute, the way they set it up," she says.

Photos: David Toerge, Dave Weinstein

Discover more about Sacramento's Streng homes at the Eichler Network's Streng Homes Headquarters.

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