Research Note : Building the American Dream DIY-Style

This Research Note examines the construction of a single-family house in Madison, Wisconsin, to understand the role of self-building in the American suburbs after World War II. Drawing on evidence from oral interviews and a private family archive, it explores Eunice and Louis Bethke’s decision to purchase a precut house package from local merchant builder Marshall Erdman in 1954. Building the home themselves saved the Bethkes nearly half the cost of comparable contractor-built houses while also giving them a degree of creative license and a sense of pride and ownership. The Bethkes’ home is an example of the collaborative nature of self-building, where homeowners contributed their own labor while using factory-produced components, expanding the way we think about postwar suburban housing and DIY (do-it-yourself) trends. Eunice’s recollections some seventy years later also underscore the value of oral histories in understanding the building of America’s postwar suburbs, which in this case show how this couple’s “American dream” was tied not just to homeownership but to the satisfaction that came with doing some of the work themselves.