Dingbat - Mid-20th Century Mass Housing Solution to the Burgeoning American Middle-Class

A dingbat (also called a stucco box or a shoe box) is a style of housing that is more utilitarian and serviceable than decorative. Typically, dingbats are box-shaped, two or three story apartment buildings with six to eight (sometimes up to ten, plot size and regulations permitting) apartments per building.

The buildings are constructed on plot sizes that are normally 100 feet long and 50 feet wide, and are built end to end on the plot. The dingbats are provided with building extensions that project sufficiently towards the street to provide for parking.

The apartment houses – mostly one or two bedroom, one bathroom units and occasionally studios – have separate entrances and reserved parking slots; at times it is tandem parking. None of the entrances (sometimes only one) are in the front of the building and the overall façade appears as a unified single family house. The supporting vertical columns are made of metal or white-plastered wood. The exterior walls of dingbats are usually plastered with stucco, though some may be covered with vertical wooden clapboard, concrete or river rock.

During the early 1950s, the increasing demand for housing in typically small urban areas could not be met by the prevalent California bungalows, Mediterranean-style small houses, Spanish Colonial Revival duplexes and Victorian-style houses. Dingbats offered the ideal solution in that they were relatively inexpensive to build, and could provide for the expanding housing needs.

The affordable rent, separate residential units, private entrances to each unit and on-site parking available in dingbats captured the imagination of the ever growing American middle-class mainly composed of city-immigrants. Furthermore it offered developers an economical construction model with its easy and repetitive designs, economies of scale and a reduced dependence on skilled labor as opposed to the existing building culture. Dingbats also offered landlords increased rental income; as they could accommodate three or four separate, fully functional housing units over the lot that until then could house just one such unit.

Consequently, dingbats became the favored mode of apartment building in the Sun Belt region (primarily in Southern California, also in Arizona, Florida, Hawaii and Nevada) of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They were mostly set in the newer or redeveloped, inexpensive plots in the city close to sewage plants, power stations, jails or major freeways, and were typically away from the city centers.

However, dingbat residents had to contend with rotting and leaky outer roofs as rainwater would get accumulated on the even, horizontal roofs of low price and quality. Further, the low-quality construction also contributed to discolored walls, poorly installed plumbing and wiring.

Dingbats were frequently given names, mainly to distinguish different buildings. While the names themselves were typically scribbled across the building in decorative and elaborate styles, they ranged from pointers to the street name (Eg. The Redendo on Redendo Avenue) to fantasy lifestyle abodes (villas, castles) and exotic places (the Caribbean, the Riviera, Hawaii).

By the mid-1970s, the dingbats’ style of apartment building faded, mainly owing to its inherent lack of aestheticism and legislation against back-out parking. Moreover, dingbats never managed to find favor with the upper middle class, let alone the upper class.

Currently, the dingbats are staging a small revival of sorts as part of a larger renaissance tuned to the architectural style of the mid-20th century modern design.

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