Michigan Limestone built employee housing in Rogers City after the Calcite Plant began operating in 1912 and a severe housing shortage left some workers in tents and others sharing homes. As the workforce grew from just over 700 to almost 1,900 in five years, the shortage became a major obstacle to attracting needed labor. In 1916, general manager Carl D. Bradley persuaded the company to buy a former sawmill site along the Lake Huron shore and build rental housing for employees. Richardson Lumber Company of Alpena constructed twenty-eight homes, including one block of Lake Street and one block of the adjacent First Street area. Most were one-story arts and crafts bungalows for management and technical personnel, while two larger two-story houses were reserved for the assistant general manager and the head of finance, and the largest home in the development housed the company's vice-president and his family. In 1917, construction began on a second complex along a two-block stretch of Second Street, with slightly smaller craftsman-style homes for employees lower in the Calcite pecking order and some larger two-story houses for larger families. Because housing remained crucial in 1918, the company bought twenty-five acres at the south end of First and Second Streets next to the quarry and built small cottage-style homes, at first without basements or indoor plumbing, that could be rented by any Calcite employee regardless of position, and a few by nonemployees. The last development to be built was the Tank Addition, and the smallest was Little Italy, which arose outside the plant's main gate sometime between 1910 and 1920 as home to seven Italian workers and their families.