Who grew up in smallest house?

The house I grew up was built in 1940 (3 bedroom 1 bath Cape Cod) with a one car 10' by 20' garage in the backyard. The lot was 45' x 110'=4950 square feet.
Home was no more than 30' in any direction with 780 square feet on bottom and 585 square feet on top floor. Unfinished basement, with a coal bin when I was young, but converted to oil.

The first house I grew up in for about the first 6 years was pretty small. I tried to find it on street level on Google maps, but all the homes there look new and bigger.

Our next house is close by and still there. But it was actually the largest house my parents ever owned by a couple hundred sq ft. Much bigger yard too.
5 houses in all in their lifetime. Last house was probably second smallest.

Quote: Pacomartin

Home was no more than 30' in any direction with 780 square feet on bottom and 585 square feet on top floor.

You had 2 floors? My dad got home
from WWII and built a 2 bedroom
house with no basement that was
maybe 900 sq ft. He added another
bedroom later making it about 1050
sq ft. We moved in 1960.

It was a precut home, they dropped off
the materials and he put it together.
One stall garage he built from scratch.
Great 50's house for small kids, but for
teens it would have been hell. Thank
god we moved when I was 11.

My first house I barely remember but was probably about 1500 square feet. We moved when the part of Gardena, California, it was in turned from a white to black neighborhood almost overnight.

I also would guess ours was about 1500 sq ft, easily less.

How many of you can still see that old house with google maps' street view? I was just inspired to see if I could for the first time and there it is. Somebody put in a bay window in place of what was a picture window, but that's it alright.

There it is, in the tax records. My parents bought it when I was born for $12.5K which they paid off in ten years. The home was already 18 years old when they bought it.

It seemed small at 780 sq feet on first floor and 585 sq feet on second floor. My little brother's 1930 duplex has a 648 square feet footprint, but he has a basement, first and second floor and an attic that size.

Two floors, about 600sq ft for each. Garden was big, mind, 75-100 foot long, probably 20 foot wide. It was a semi-detached house from the 1890's, and one of the oldest buildings on the road I lived on. There was a pair of them, probably built for the commercial gardeners, or possible cemetery workers. There was a huge cemetery just down the road from us, where London's overflow of dead were buried.

Wow, I haven't seen a picture of the house I grew up in since I moved out over 30 years ago. I just Googled it and found this picture.

I definitely don't remember it being so small.

Quote: DRich

Wow, I haven't seen a picture of the house I grew up in

That's pretty much the house my dad built in 1945,
but no fireplace or attached garage. Kitchen, dining
room, living room, 2 small bedrooms and 1 bath.
Great starter house for a small family, GI's built millions of
these after the war in suburbia. My dad was 30 and bought
his first car in 1950 when he was 35. Didn't need one
till then.

The Tiny House Movement is on television promoting living in houses from 100 to 400 square feet.


This house is 200 sq feet and built entirely of plastic. It's a showpiece home for using plastics in environmentally friendly ways.

Quote: DRich

Wow, I haven't seen a picture of the house I grew up in since I moved out over 30 years ago. I just Googled it and found this picture.
I definitely don't remember it being so small.

I don't know where this home is, but it looks like the neighborhood is valuable. The homes on either side seem to have been massively upgraded.