Tournalaid homes were made in the hundreds during the WWII-era. These cement homes were prefabricated by a machine called the Tournalayer, designed and built by R. G. LeTourneau. The first Tournalayers were built in 1946 at the LeTourneau factory in Peoria, IL.
The Tournalayer was a giant mobile concrete form on wheels, a large 3-D printer of sorts using concrete. It was designed to build steel-reinforced concrete Tournalaid homes – one every 24 hours.
Each Tournalaid home had a footprint of 30 feet by 20 feet. It had a living room, kitchen, utility
room, and two bedrooms. Two Tournalaid homes exist next to the Longview factory, seen below.
When I visited the LeTourneau’s old factory grounds in 2021, I took the following two pictures of the Tournalaid homes.
Efforts to Save These Existing Tournalaid Homes
A local Longview, TX group started a website at https://tournalaid.com with the goal of saving the Tournalaid homes from demolition. Please sign up for updates from the aforementioned website and follow their updates. Let’s hope that we can save them.
“We are publicly petitioning Komatsu Mining Corp. (Joy Global Longview Operations llc) to immediately cease from demolition or taking any adverse action against the two Tournalaid homes located on their properties on Macarthur street in Longview, Tx.”
