steel arch buildings

Quonset huts are lightweight prefabricated structures made of corrugated galvanized iron and semcircular arched ribs. The design of quonset huts is based on the Nissen hut developed by the Navy in 1941. Quionset huts were named after the place where they were first manufactured, Quonset Point. Quonset huts can be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor. Quonset huts were made for the military but were sold to the public after the war ended to be used as commercial buildings.

The Navy developed the Nissen hut in 1941. The Nissen hut was changed to use corrugated iron and arched ribs to become the quonset hut. In later years, the two ends of the quonset huts were covered with plywood having doors and windows. Another way the Nissen hut was improved was by adding interior pressed wood lining, insulation, and a one inch tongue groove plyood floor on a raised metal framework.

The first quonset hut measured sixteen feet by thirty feet and could be assembled by a team of eight men in one day. Quonset huts were later modified to the standard size of twenty feet by forty eight feet with a ten foot radius resulting in seven hundred twenty square feet of floor space inside. Four foot overhangs at each end to protect the entrances against the weather were sometimes added to quonset huts. Later, a warehouse size quonset hut of forty feet by one hundred feet was developed. The interior space of quonset huts is open and flexible.

Manufacturing of quonset huts stopped in 1959. However, the portability and adaptability of quonset huts have kept them in use. Many quonset huts were used as homes and businesses after they stopped being made. Large universities and colleges that had an influx of students resulting from the GI bill used quonset huts on campus. They are not used often today, but they are still around. .