The War Apartments and Midcentury · 1943–1965

The war apartments

1943

In the spring of 1943 the Chronicle announced that the government had leased “the Reagan Lodge Building at Eleventh and Harvard,” owned by the Home Life Assurance Company, for seven years through the Home Owners Loan Corporation, to be converted into twenty-four three-room apartments at $45 a month for war workers, “the largest apartment house on the North Side.” The lease was negotiated by C. P. Sledge of the Sledge Realty Company and Lester A. Miller, Home Life’s general manager, and “it was estimated the lease will run to more than $85,000 for the period”; Henry A. Stubie was the architect in charge of remodeling. The paper printed a photograph of the building, the earliest known.

The first classified advertisement from the numbered apartments, in September 1943, offered a 60-inch flat-top desk and a leather-cushioned swivel chair for sale from Apartment 11: the insurance office furniture making way for the tenants. The changeover, captured in one small ad.

The source

Low-resolution clipping of classified ads offering office furniture, with Harvard and 11th highlighted in yellow.
Houston Chronicle classifieds, Sept. 13–16, 1943: an ad selling a 60-inch flat-top desk and a swivel chair from “Apt. 11, 1102 Harvard and 11th St.” (a low-resolution copy carrying the database’s search highlights).
Partial newspaper page: a dark halftone photograph of a three-story, flat-roofed masonry building seen from the corner, headed Government Leases Lodge Building for Seven Years, beside a news story.
Houston Chronicle, spring 1943 (the clipping carries no date): the photograph “Government Leases Lodge Building for Seven Years,” the earliest known image of the finished building, beside the story “Reagan Lodge to Be Changed Into Quarters” (contrast adjusted).

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