1937 Home Beautiful Caravan Article and Plan

[Richard]

This arrived in the mail the other day, its the 1937 Home Beautiful magazine that has several articles on caravans as well as a plan to build the Home Beautiful Caravan.

The articles are spread over about 14 pages and it is a real insight to caravanning in the 1930's. I hope you enjoy it as the full set of Home Beautiful articles have never been seen on the internet before.

[Richard]

Second installment of the Home Beautiful articles.

[Richard]

The third installment to this exciting article.

[Richard]

An article on Caravanning in Australia and the trends overseas, from the Home Beautiful magazine.

[Richard]

I have actually jumbled the How to Build Your Own Caravan article a little bit so here are the last 3 pages of that article.

This is also the last of the information on caravans printed in the 1937 Home Beautiful magazine. But hopefully Griffin may be able to add some more information to it ?

[griffin]

At the risk of duplicating some of your info I have an update from a post War copy of "Caravans and Boats" from Home Beautiful. My copy doesn't have a cover and no date is on it anywhere but from articles it appears to be 1947 or 48. The index page has the following photograph of The Home Beautiful Caravan from Mr Oulton's design. Commencing on page 6 is an article by Mr Oulton on the van and how to build it which extends to 13 pages of text and plans with a further page devoted to a smaller version. There are some interesting 'facts' and details not in the pre-war version, including a modification to carry a small dinghy or draw which stores under the bed and slides out the back via a hinged flap. Another two pages are then devoted to is described as a 'de-luxe' version.
The introduction claims that since the plan was first published more than fifty percent of vans on the roads and in parks are of the design and timber benders claim that eighty percent of their business has been bending for the plan. Given this claim one could wonder where they all went, surely a few must have survived??
I shall post all these pages over a couple of posts and hope they are of interest, who knows someone might decide to build one to revive their popularity.

Well that might do for the first post.


George

[griffin]

Here's the 2nd half of the Home Beautiful article.

And here's the small version of the H.B. caravan.

George