In June 1947, Architectural Forum chose a
unique cover star. The Lustron was a steel frame home with
steel panels and a steel roof. And a lot of them are still around today. It was a new idea of home for
post-World War II America. It was the future of housing,
homes made in a factory and sent around the country
with an instruction manual for every single piece. Steel on the outside. Steel on the inside. And they made house after house
after house until 1950, when, just 3 years
after that cover shot the future of housing became a footnote. But the failure of this house isn’t just
an oddity in homebuilding. It’s a story of post-war optimism,
the limits of technology and a testing ground for how the government and private industry could or couldn't work together. In 1940, a typical house would have had a
wood frame and wood and plaster walls. A lot do today. When you change that to a steel frame and
steel panels things get weird. Cool! What? Most panels in a Lustron home are porcelain
enamel-covered steel. When we started treating the house more like
a car than a house, things went better. The finish on that is different than
the finish on this and the same is true of some other
parts of the house. This is the durable kind of thing
that's held the test of time. And then that is... I think those tend to get scruffy. Imagine a steel panel. In the factory they melted glass and
fused it to the steel creating porcelain enamel, a surprisingly durable,
creamy surface that showed up in Lustron homes
and could be tinted colors: maize yellow, surf blue, desert tan,
and dove gray. Though it was meant to look like Spanish tile
the roof was porcelain enameled steel too. It covered a ceiling-mounted
radiant heating system. Lustron printed instructions for, and made,
all the plumbing too. Oh cool... oh look! What, what, what? Look, it says Lustron corporation on there. Oh, oh! That's awesome. I should get my cell phone and have you take
a picture for me because I can't— I'm not tall enough. Lustron Corporation, Columbus, Ohio. Local Union number 189. Oh my gosh. Built ins were also a required feature. Like this passthrough between the kitchen
and dining room. So the house is about a thousand square feet
which is small, by modern standards. But in all the houses that were built in the
emerging suburbs in the 50s and 60s were generally about this size and one bathroom typically. This house is the Westchester 2 bedroom plan But there were other configurations as well. When Life Magazine published a pre-production
Lustron ad in 1948 thousands of people clipped the coupon in
the lower right corner to get a free booklet. Why was this the house America
has been waiting for? And what went wrong? In 1947, Lustron was perfectly situated between
two larger trends. After World War II, millions of returning
GIs needed housing due to the Great Depression and construction
restrictions during the war. In 1946, Congress declared housing
a national emergency. That intersected with funding trends, private venture capital wouldn’t become
mainstream until the late 1940s and 1950s. But a post-Depression agency, the Reconstruction
Finance Corporation existed to fund depressed sectors of the economy. The “RFC” had already experimented with
funding weird prefabricated home ideas Like this concrete building. An inventor and builder named Carl Strandlund who’d previously worked with porcelain enamel
on buildings like gas stations and restaurants saw his opening in the timeline. By 1947, he’d snagged a $12,500,000 loan
to build out the Lustron factory in Columbus Ohio a building that today is a
designer shoe warehouse. Warehouse. Designer shoe warehouse warehouse. Yeah. Life published that hit ad with the coupon and Popular Mechanics was soon cooing over
“how porcelain skin protects prefab.” But by 1948, the house that America
was talking about was running into problems. The most obvious impediment, the steel,
wasn’t the only factor. Yes, steel is heavy. A Lustron home needed 12 tons. That weight did prevent Lustrons from being
shipped West of the Rockies but custom trailers like this one
helped move the steel. Lustron also benefited by getting
the lion’s share of the government allocation of steel
for prefab homes. However, by 1948, Time Magazine was asking
the obvious question: Did people want to live in steel houses? Especially ones with rigid floorplans
that were hard to modify. Controlling every element of production also
contributed to price hikes and delays. The Lustron factory made nearly
every part of the house. For one example, they bought a really expensive
press to make bathtubs. But theirs was 5 feet and a half inch long
instead of the standard 5 feet. So they couldn't buy their own tubs
or sell to others. That half inch was an expensive mistake
that never paid off. All this not only increased prices,
but made those prices non-standard. By January 1949, Carl Strandlund was in Life
Magazine promoting the home as a revolution but prices had ballooned up to $10,000. That was thousands more than the early ambition
and a lot of money for GIs. That didn’t stack up well against other
new homes that were larger and more traditional. Prices also varied from place to place. Look at the costs in Indiana, North Carolina,
and Pennsylvania. Localization made it tougher in other ways
too. Some local codes made it impossible to even
build a steel home, like in Chicago. Mass developments like this one, in Quantico,
in Virginia, were part of the plan, but they ended up
being rare. Even Lustron’s funding became a hindrance. As further funding requests ticked up to between
$35 million and $40 million Lustron attracted press attention quickly for failing to hit goals and
requiring Government money. The 1947 cover model was suddenly in question
by May of 1949. Scandals that later came to light, like a
paid-for advertorial by Senator Joseph McCarthy,
didn’t help. But just having the public eye on the company’s
performance was probably the greatest challenge. By 1950, Lustron’s funding was recalled
and the company entered bankruptcy. Over just 2 years, they never sold more than
300 homes a month. 2.1 miles, or about 3.37 kilometers from the
Designer Shoe Warehouse Warehouse is the Whitehall Historical Society's headquarters
which was moved there in 2003 on the site of a former volleyball court. Half of it is set up as a home
and the other half is set up as meeting and display space. This garage contains our restroom and a kitchen. And then the front half of it is workshop
and storage. We don't have a lot of resources. So when it came time for us to try to find
a headquarters I knew that the house was for sale on eBay. I was convinced that we could do this
but I just decided that it was something we could handle
by taking it apart and putting it back together again. So I approached the owner of the house
and asked if they would donate it to us which they did. This house, it was in London, Ohio. These are pictures of us taking the house
apart over in London. as we progressed here, it was just getting
to be a big open space inside. We had a dedication day where we had
a groundbreaking ceremony and we had a special cake with the
Lustron emblem on it. This is the manual. Let me bring this over here. And we used it for both assembling and
disassembling the house. Lustron had delivered 2,600 homes around the
country but fell far short of their ambitions. They had failed. But they aren't forgotten. Thanks for visiting with me in this Lustron
home. There were a couple of books that were indispensable
to the research for this project. So, if you want to nerd out more about these
homes, check those out. I'll put links to them in the description. Also, I really want to thank the commenter
who came up with the idea for this video. Yea, it was just a comment saying that Lustron
homes were interesting and everybody at Vox agreed. So yea, thanks for that and if there are any
other pieces of interesting or forgotten architecture that you think we should cover
in a future video let us know!
that's so cool! Man the research the developers did is amazing.
This is so cool!
Really really cool! I have so many questions though, like:
Interesting video. There's a few of those around Des Moines, IA.
Fuck i know it was a failed idea at the time, but now it could be the re-invent the wheel thing that gets houses to people who can’t afford it. BUT, I bet that if someone wants to get it going, people are going to complain and protest.
That was fascinating, although I have to wonder how well heating coming from the ceiling would work.
Seems to me like putting it under the floor like steam heat would make much more sense.
They all look the same. It's weird because I thought the devs made it all up but they were at some point planning on becoming the norm for real.