In the years following World War II, the United States experienced housing shortages.
[1] According to the Washington Post in 1953, home builders were being confronted for the first time since before the war with a buyer's market.
[2] According to Samuel Dodd, writing in the Journal of Design History, the first housing show was organized in 1948 by the NABH under the brand Parade of Homes.
[3] Early events featured crowd-drawing publicity stunts such as beauty contests and other sexualized components; a Hartford, Connecticut show featured a "girl in a bathtub" promotion -- a female employee sitting in a bathtub answering questions.
[1] Other publicity stunts included a 1956 Kansas City show that featured a team assembling and furnishing a prefabricated home in eight hours.
Started in 1976,[8][9] a previous incarnation of the event was known as the Parade of Homes and later as Street of Dreams.