I mean, of course it did, and some still is today (some is more accurately fabric) but…just paper. No decoration, no tight pressed glue to make it all smooth and wall-like, just…brown paper on the wall.
Weird. I bet, uh, I bet that’s why it’s called wallpaper, eh? :smack:
But then it also started wondering…why is there plain brown paper tacked to the wall? Is wallpaper - or was wallpaper at one time - more than decorative? Or did/does it serve a functional purpose in a room? Or was loose paper with visible tacks a decorative choice at the time?
*To be filed with other flashes of brilliance such as, “Hey, I bet the glovebox would be a great place to keep an extra pair of gloves for the car!” :smack:
I don’t know what those folks were up to, but I’ve never seen wallpaper done that way. I’ve seen wallpaper that was put up with flour paste, and I’ve removed wallpaper that had newspaper sheets from the eary 1900s under it where the folks used the newpaper to even out the places in the wall that weren’t flat, but I’ve never heard of tacking huge sheets of paper on the wall. Even the ancient stuff I’ve seen was in strips just like you buy it today.
Wallpaper is functional as well as decorative. You can put up plain wallpaper and paint over it, then remove the wallpaper and start over clean when you’ve repainted too many times. If you’ve got wallpaper, you don’t have to go to any great lengths to repair a hole, either. Just patch and slap wallpaper over it - no mudwork involved.
It doesn’t look like wallpaper to me, even; it looks like cloth tacked to wooden supports. Are you sure it is actual wallpaper stuck/tacked onto actual walls?
Here’s a picture from a different house I found searching for pictures of 1939 Oklahoma dustbowl.I’m guessing people were just too poor to buy real wallpaper or paint, and this method provided at least some way to cover the dried, cracking walls.
Looks more like they couldn’t afford plaster, and this provided the interior wall and the covering. The paper looks nailed or stapled.
Today, it would be the construction plastic. I suppose there might be something that passes for insulation in behind, although they didn’t have fibreglas back then (I think) and it’s not strong enough to hold sawdust I would guess…
I hope all the assholes (mostly homebuilders) that did NOT prep a wall properly first before putting up wallpaper burn in hell for all eternity. I’ve lost count of how many manhours I’ve wasted due to wallpaper glued firm to unprepped wallboard etc…
Another thing to consider is that the paint roller was invented in 1940. I can’t imagine painting a whole house with a brush. Paper would be so much faster and easier.
The picture in the OP is NOT wallpaper, it’s just paper tacked up.
I’ve remodeled both my mother’s house (built 1905) and my grandmother’s (1920s) and both had wallpaper in places.
The horse hair plaster which covered the lath tended to crack and wallpaper was good at covering the cracks in addition to the normal decorative functions.
Like Crazyhorse the first thing I thought when I saw the linked picture was from Oklahoma in 1939 was ‘Dust Bowl.’ My suspicion is that it was just a practical means and available medium with which to keep dust out of residential and public gathering places.
My mother grew up in the 40s and 50s, and she has told me that if you had uncracked plaster on your walls, you didn’t use wallpaper. It was a subtle sign of how sturdy your house was. Once you started having cracks, then wallpaper hid them.
Sounds like everyone is on the right track. For on the other side of the wall - I’ve never seen one, but I remember the phrase “tar paper shack”. I’m guessing that’s for when you don’t have the material to do the outside of the wall, either. Or when the outside is falling apart.
That’s my guess too. It was common to put things over the walls during the dust bowl days to attempt to keep as much dust out as possible. The houses had a lot of cracks. Although it doesn’t prove anything, you can actually see dust on the guitar in Crazyhorse’s link.
