Drywall was invented in 1894 and entered commercial production in 1917, but it didn’t become the standard wall material in American homes until after World War II. The gap between invention and widespread adoption spans more than 50 years, driven by two world wars, a housing crisis, and builders who initially wanted nothing to do with it.
The 1894 Patent
Augustine Sackett filed the first patent for what would become drywall on May 22, 1894. His “Sackett Board” was a flat panel made for wall coverings, built from alternating layers of paper and plaster. A sheet of paper was laid down, a thin layer of plaster spread over it, another sheet of paper placed on top, and the process repeated. A single board typically used four to ten sheets of paper with plaster between each one, depending on how thick the finished panel needed to be.
The concept was simple: take the wet plaster that skilled workers spent days applying to walls by hand, sandwich it between paper in a factory, and ship it to the job site ready to nail up. But the construction industry wasn’t interested. Builders and tradespeople saw plaster walls as the mark of quality craftsmanship. Sackett Board looked like a cheap shortcut, and for years it mostly was. The early panels were rough, hard to finish smoothly, and used primarily for fireproofing rather than as a finished wall surface.
Sheetrock Arrives in 1917
The United States Gypsum Corporation introduced its Sheetrock brand gypsum panel in 1917, transforming the product from a niche fireproofing material into something marketed as a real alternative to plaster. The selling points were speed, lower cost, and fire resistance. Unlike Sackett’s layered design, Sheetrock used a single gypsum core wrapped in heavy paper, closer to what you’d recognize as modern drywall.
World War I gave the product its first large-scale proving ground. The military needed barracks and support buildings constructed fast, and gypsum board fit the requirement perfectly. Production methods became standardized during this period, and the material was used widely across military construction. But when the war ended, the civilian building industry still preferred traditional plaster. Most homeowners and builders continued to see drywall as a wartime compromise, not a permanent solution.
The 1933 World’s Fair Breakthrough
Drywall got its biggest marketing moment in 1933 and 1934, when Sheetrock panels were used to construct a large portion of the Chicago World’s Fair. The project demonstrated that drywall could produce clean, professional-looking walls at a scale and speed that plaster couldn’t match. USG launched its first major advertising campaign off the back of the fair, pushing Sheetrock into the awareness of architects, builders, and the general public. Adoption ticked upward through the 1930s, but plaster still dominated residential construction heading into the next decade.
World War II Changes Everything
The real turning point came with World War II. Just as in World War I, the military needed buildings fast. But this time the scale was vastly larger, and the labor shortage was more severe. Skilled plasterers were overseas or working in defense factories. Drywall could be installed by workers with far less training in a fraction of the time, and wartime construction projects used it extensively.
When the war ended in 1945, millions of returning veterans needed homes, and they needed them immediately. The country faced a housing shortage of historic proportions. Builders couldn’t afford to wait for skilled plaster crews to spend a week finishing each house’s walls. Drywall was the only realistic option for building at the speed the market demanded.
Levittown and Mass Production
The postwar housing boom made drywall the American standard almost overnight. Levittown, the iconic planned community on Long Island, became the model for how homes would be built going forward. Developer Levitt & Sons used sheets of gypsum wallboard instead of hand-laid plaster, along with other modern materials like plywood in place of traditional planks. The entire construction process was designed around speed and efficiency, with houses planned on a two-foot module so that standard-sized panels fit with minimal cutting.
The results were staggering. Levitt & Sons claimed they could complete a house every eleven minutes at peak production. That kind of pace was only possible because drywall eliminated the most time-consuming step in traditional homebuilding. Plaster required multiple coats, each needing days to dry before the next could be applied. A single room could take a week or more. Drywall went up in hours, and finishing the seams took a day or two at most.
As Levittown-style developments spread across the country through the late 1940s and 1950s, drywall became the default. By the mid-1950s, the transition was essentially complete for new residential construction. Plaster continued in some high-end custom homes and commercial buildings, but the economics were settled. Drywall was faster, cheaper, and good enough for the vast majority of applications.
Why It Took So Long
The 50-plus year gap between Sackett’s 1894 patent and drywall’s dominance in the late 1940s comes down to three factors. First, the early product genuinely wasn’t as good as skilled plaster work. It took decades of refinement before drywall panels and joint compounds could produce walls that looked comparable. Second, the construction trades resisted a material that threatened the livelihood of plasterers, and builders were reluctant to use something their customers associated with cheap, temporary construction. Third, there was no pressure to change. As long as labor was available and affordable, plaster worked fine.
It took a national emergency, millions of veterans who needed houses yesterday, and a severe shortage of skilled labor to finally push the industry past its resistance. Once builders saw how much faster and cheaper drywall made the process, there was no going back. Every major innovation in the product since then, from moisture-resistant panels to soundproofing varieties, has built on the same basic structure that Sackett patented more than 130 years ago.