Visually, the University of Chicago was a mind-bending experience in the aftermath of World War II. The school’s original architects were inspired by the Gothic architecture of England’s Cambridge and Oxford universities. But in 1946, the graceful flying buttresses and gargoyles shared Chicago’s campus with squat, faceless housing for an unprecedented flood of freshmen, many of them veterans.
“The university book store said it expects to be able to meet only about three-quarters of the demand for text books,” the Tribune reported.
Thanks to Uncle Sam, a social revolution was taking place in the improvised dormitories lining Midway Plaisance, the boulevard bisecting the campus.
Previously, few blue-collar Americans could afford a college education and thus an entrance to the middle class. But in 1944, the government said, “Open sesame,” with the GI Bill of Rights. And thousands of veterans took up the deal after they were mustered out when World War II ended the next year.
“This is an opportunity for you to study anywhere in the United States at any approved school which you consider best in the field you want to enter,” was the bill’s promise. “The government will pay to the school you have chosen up to $500 for an ordinary school year to cover tuition, laboratory, library, health, infirmary and similar fees.”
To be eligible, veterans had to have been in active service for 90 days or more, unless they had been discharged because of a service-related injury or disability
The federal government’s generosity resulted in hastily-built, prefab housing on college campuses. “They are of a type that can be transported on a low slung truck without being taken down and reassembled,” wrote the Tribune of 190 “war plant cottages” arriving at the University of Chicago in 1946.
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By 1946, more than 10,000 veterans were enrolled between Northwestern University’s Evanston and Chicago campuses — an 11-fold increase from the previous year. The university built Quonset huts, where students slept on eight wrought-iron bunk beds and studied on sheet-metal desks. Their prototypes housed GIs on World War II battlefields.
As a 15-year-old freshman, Melvin Hodge lived in one dubbed the “music school hut” because of its proximity to Northwestern’s School of Music. “I can’t say that winding up in a Quonset hut was any big shock,” Hodge recalled. “Some of my very best friends were people back from service.”
One had been a fighter pilot another a Naval officer on a destroyer.
In 1947, ex-GIs made up nearly half of the nation’s college students. By 1950, the number of college graduates had increased by 300,000.
Computing the GI Bill of Rights’ total effect requires an algorithm that takes into account the fact that more college graduates means more parents can send their children to college.
In Europe, dukes and duchesses are at the pinnacle of countries long since republics. In America, everyone wants to be known as descendants of the class born of the GI Bill of Rights. Even the wealthy will say, “Well, actually, we’re middle class.”
So, on this Veterans Day, let it be remembered that the Quonset hut and similar prefabricated housing built on college campuses for returning vets was the birthplace of a middle class.
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