The houses Kate Gleason built are still structurally sound – 90 years later, writes Jan de Beer.

Ever heard of Kate Gleason? Probably not, especially in a country where the sight of a skirt on a building site is still often regarded as unexpected and unusual. This is despite Eunice Forbes and Elsabe Kearsley striking major blows for the fairer sex as presidents of Master Builders SA and the South African Institution of Civil Engineering respectively, and Women for Housing (now rebranded ‘Khuthaza’) doing sterling work to drive change in construction.

But if emancipation is still slow in the 21st Century, think back to 1919 when Kate Gleason made history by building 75 concrete houses over a period of six years in East Rochester, New York State.

Gleason’s houses were, according to a recent Concrete International article, small by today’s standards but equipped with built-in garages, book cases, kitchens, and other features advanced for their day. Fireplaces were first cast-in-place concrete with tile trim, but later prefabricated fireplaces were utilised.

Gleason dubbed her first housing development, ‘Concrest’, derived from the words ‘concrete’ and ‘crest’, referring to the hillside location. Many homes were set into the grade of the site, making it possible to have a house with two levels above ground on one side, and three on the opposite side, with access to a basement-level garage in each dwelling. This was pretty advanced planning for 1919.

She said: “My inspiration for mass production methods came from my visits to the Cadillac factory where Mr Leland showed me the production of eight-cylinder engines.”

Exterior walls were reinforced concrete up to the second-floor ceiling joists. The exterior shell had a rough stucco finish intended to remain unpainted. From the second-floor ceiling on upwards, the walls were wood-framed to the peak on the gambrel ends, then sheathed with plaster and lath and finished with stucco to match the concrete walls below.

The concrete walls were 200 mm thick at foundation level, 150 mm at the first floor, and 100 mm at second-floor level. Floors were 90 mm thick cast-in-place concrete reinforced with metal lath and reinforcing bars, and containing integral concrete beams. Originally, the inside of the concrete outer walls was finished using 2x2 wood studs with stretched canvas sheathing. M.K. Hurd writes in Concrete International that Gleason’s concrete was described in reports of the time as “1:4 gravel concrete”, mixed in a Jaeger mixer that discharged into the skip of

a special angle-iron-framed telescoping tower that she personally designed to meet the need for lightweight, mobile placing equipment. But Gleason did more than just built the concrete homes: she also built a community golf course, and every year visited the suburbs, walking the streets and sponsoring an annual garden contest. Six years ago, a study of the houses Gleason built – which are still inhabited – showed them to be structurally stable with few cracks in the walls. But, predictably, commercial and industrial development is threatening to destroy the heritage left by this pioneering woman builder. The residents of Concrest, however, are determined to preserve it and are working hard to have the suburb listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Gleason is believed to have been the first female member of the American Concrete Institute. And what a stir she must have caused at branch meetings. She died in 1933 at the age of 68. There ought to be a monument in her memory. A concrete one, of course. Reproduced by kind permission of the CNCI and published in the May 2009 issue of CONCRETE TRENDS, the official journal of the Cement & Concrete Institute Written by Jan de Beer