Background
Gunnison was born on June 9, 1896, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Herbert Foster Gunnison, publisher of the Brooklyn Eagle, and of Alice May.
Gunnison was born on June 9, 1896, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Herbert Foster Gunnison, publisher of the Brooklyn Eagle, and of Alice May.
Educated mainly in Brooklyn public schools, Gunnison finished secondary school at Culver Military Academy, Culver, Indiana. He then entered St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, from which he graduated in 1918. Gunnison next studied at the United States Naval Academy and in 1919 was commissioned as an ensign. He served a two-year tour of duty in the Mediterranean and resigned his commission in 1921.
From 1921 to 1923, Gunnison worked for Edward John Noble, the manufacturer of the Life Saver candy at Port Chester, New York. In 1923, determined to create a business for himself, Gunnison entered a partnership in a small company that designed and built electric lighting fixtures. Cox, Nostrand and Gunnison became a leading firm in the lighting of major Art Deco buildings in New York, including the Empire State Building, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center. The company attracted national attention with the creation of a huge chandelier (twenty-five feet in diameter, six tons in weight, with 400 floodlights) for the Center Theater in Rockefeller Center, and received much praise for the design and effects of its other fixtures. Gunnison became steeped in the ideas and ideology of the Art Deco movement, which despite its various modes of development claimed above all to come to terms with and to express fully the meaning, values, and materials of what had become known simply as the Machine. A trip to Europe in the 1920's and extensive contact with Beaux Arts-trained architects provided Gunnison with the assurance that both art and architecture were developing in concert with modern technology rather than being threatened by it. With its emphasis on technology, the Art Deco movement provided Gunnison with the vision of a machine-based housing industry, rather than one depending on craftsmen working on single structures. With the support and advice of Owen D. Young, chairman of the General Electric Company, Gunnison moved from the design and production of lighting fixtures to houses. In 1934 Gunnison founded Houses, Inc. , a company created to stimulate research, construction, management, and financing in prefabricated housing. Houses, Inc. , was affiliated with two important companies: National Houses, which made steel-frame, steel-panel buildings; and American Houses, producer of the Motohome, which was constructed of steel-frame, asbestos cement panels. Houses, Inc. extensively promoted the Motohome. In April 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's mother untied a ribbon wrapped around a cellophane-packaged Motohome at Wanamaker's department store in New York. Gunnison also promoted the Motohome by holding open houses. As the result of internal dispute, chiefly personality conflicts, Gunnison divested himself of Houses, Inc. , in late 1935 and soon formed his own company, Gunnison Magic Homes, in New Albany, Indiana. Adapting a waterproof plywood, stressed-skin panel developed by the U. S. Forest Products Laboratory, the company became one of the best-known manufacturers in the prefabrication industry. Gunnison sought to emulate not only the automobile industry's production methods but also its marketing strategy. While other prefabricators sought to build entire subdivisions or villages, he developed and adhered to a retail merchandising system based upon the dealership. Like automobile dealers, Gunnison house dealers offered individual customers various home models, a year-long warranty, and a complete line of maintenance services. In 1944 Gunnison's company, known since 1937 as Gunnison Housing Corporation, became a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation under the name Gunnison Homes. Gunnison remained as president of the company until 1950 and was a director until 1953. The company was then renamed United States Steel Homes. It was phased out in 1974. Gunnison was one of the creators in 1942 of the Prefabricated Homes Manufacturing Institute. In recognition of his contributions to prefabrication, the National Association of Home Builders elected him to its Hall of Fame, calling him the Father of Prefab. Others have called him the Henry Ford of Housing. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, on October 19, 1961.
On April 13, 1918, Gunnison married Caroline McAllaster; they had one son. In 1949 Gunnison's first marriage ended in divorce, and on October 24, 1950, he married Mary Moore. They had one daughter.