Arthurdale House Styles
The next 75 houses, designated Wagner Houses, were all created in 1935. Standing one and one half or two stories high, they were substantially larger than the Hodgson Houses. Built on raised cinderblock foundations, the upper stories had wood frames and siding. Only six of these houses had basements. These latter houses had hipped roofs of cedar shingles, while all of the others had gabled roofs.
Because Eleanor Roosevelt was an advocate of rural electrification, she asked that these houses be fully electrified. However, the heating systems remained either steam heat coal fired or forced hot air. All of the houses also used coal stoves in the kitchen for cooking, as a supplementary heat source, and to supply heat to generate hot water. As did the earlier houses, they also had indoor bathrooms and running water.
In keeping with the intention that Arthurdale was to be a self sufficient farming community, each Wagner House came with outbuildings: a barn, hen and hog houses, and a root cellar to help preserve farm produce, a trend that was to stay with the Stone Houses which followed.