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Click Image To Visit Site Has today’s economy made you put off your dreams of a new home? The new book, Prosperity Plans, might get you dreaming again.

Prosperity Plans – A complete reprint of the 1935 booklet, Farmhouse Plans, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with forty small house designs, in a twenty-first century edition with Internet sources of working drawings and construction details



Today’s architects, builders and prospective homeowners can learn from a series of fascinating "Growing House" designs created in 1934. That was the time of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl droughts, when American’s faced economic horrors that make today’s problems seem mild.

The designs, first published in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s booklet, Farmhouse Plans, show how low-cost, small houses can be planned to grow into larger, more comfortable homes, over time. The idea was to help homeowners spread the cost of construction over many years as houses were expanded in two, three or more stages.

The Growing Houses all started with attractive cottages, each with a kitchen, bath and one or two multi-purpose rooms. Carefully planned additional stages of construction added more bedrooms and more formal living spaces with very little demolition and little or no disruption of family life. Each stage created a new home that looked as good or better than the one before it.

Kentucky Farmhouse, 1936 North Carolina Growing House, 1937

Prosperity Plans includes a complete reprint of the original 1935 booklet with forty home plans, a new forward by architect Donald J. Berg, photos of the homes and the times, and links to Internet sources of free downloadable copies of the houses’ original construction drawings and building details.

Get your copy right now, by instant download, for just $9.95, with a no-risk money-back guarantee.

"An interesting look back to where we were only a few generations ago…it’s time to look at homes like this and abandon the ‘McMansion’ generation…well written and researched" J.D., West Central Florida

Front porch of Clark home built by the Farm Security Administration. Coffee County, Alabama, photo by John Collier, 1941 See Design #6517 in Prosperity Plans and in the free 1934 working drawings available with the book.

Don Berg is a member of the American Institute of Architects and the Society of Architectural Historians. He has published fifteen books on American building and landscape design. His designs, articles and… Read more…