E. F. Hodgson Portable Houses
In 1892, Ernest F. Hodgson began manufacturing portable poultry brooders in Dover. Marketed under names such as “Peep o’ Days” and “Wigwarms,” the small structures were designed to be produced efficiently, transported easily and assembled where they were needed.
The success of the brooders encouraged Hodgson to expand into other prefabricated products. The company manufactured doghouses, children’s playhouses, workshops, garages and agricultural buildings before adding summer cottages and complete houses to its catalogs by the early twentieth century.
Hodgson buildings differed from many later kit houses. Rather than shipping bundles of individually cut lumber, the company manufactured complete wall and roof sections at its Dover factory. These standardized panels, usually six to ten feet wide, were transported to the building site and fastened together with vertical timbers and bolts. Customers could order simple seasonal cottages or double-walled houses intended for year-round use.
The company expanded from its original Farm Street location to a factory near Dover’s railroad, where finished building sections could be loaded and shipped. From 1905 through 1944, Hodgson houses, camps and other portable structures were sent throughout the United States and to customers in Canada, Europe and the Middle East.
The E. F. Hodgson Company made rural Dover an early center of prefabricated construction. Its buildings anticipated later methods of producing standardized housing components in a factory and assembling them quickly at their final destination.
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