The four-story Nonsuch House on London Bridge, completed in 1579, is the earliest documented prefabricated building. It was originally constructed in the Netherlands, taken apart and shipped to London in pieces in 1578, where it was reassembled. Each timber was marked so that it could be reconstructed correctly. It was reassembled in the manner later typical of that of an American barn or prefab housing. The name Nonsuch may have referred to Henry VIII's now vanished Nonsuch Palace outside London; it meant there was "none such" anywhere else — that it was an unequalled paragon of its kind.
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Famous quotes containing the word house:
“Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)