An old Boeing factory in Seattle is being cleared out to make room for a strip mall (or something to that effect, I’m sure). But what’s noteworthy is that the factory lumber is being salvaged to build homes with.
According to Treehugger, the Duluth Timber Company are the ones reclaiming the wood from the 158,000sqm facility that helped build over 7000 B-17 and B-29 Bombers. Even cooler is that a fake residential neighbourhood was built on top of the factory to disguise it and protect against enemy attack during WWII.
The building’s unique role in history begins when John Stewart Detlie, a Hollywood set designer, helped “hide” the plant using design techniques used for film. The fake housing development covered nearly 26 acres with netting, plywood and chicken wire on top of the roof to thwart bombing runs by Japanese forces. One fake rooftop corner street sign read “Synthetic St. & Burlap Blvd.” The plant produced up to a staggering 362 planes a month, mostly the B-17 and B-29 Flying Fortress. The building was also one of the largest in the word with some of the longest single-span trusses in its time.
Tell me you don’t want a home made of that. [Treehugger]