A loyal reader forwarded this gallery of the Hanford “Alphabet Houses.” (We’re all sorry about the pop-ups) The site doesn’t (as far as I could tell) get into the history of the houses (the gov’t decides to import a shitload of folks, so builds a shitload of houses in a hurry for them), but having recently toured residential Richland, I must note the irony that a bunch of houses that were designed for rapid (rather than durable or especially interesting) construction have held up astonishingly well for 60 years or so, and the neighborhoods look less uniform than anything I’ve seen built in the last 30 years. Where’s the best place in your house to be during an air raid?