Lustron Homes Were the Original Prefabricated Houses

Many kids played with Erector Sets as kids, building all sorts of things, including steel houses. Imagine you are GI Joe, coming back from a stint with Uncle Sam in Europe or Asia in World War II, and you get a chance to relive your childhood?

That is exactly the scenereo for about 2500 families from 1949 to 1950, when the truck from the Lustron Corporation of Columbus, Ohio, pulled up with about 3000 pieces of metal for you to fit together to make your dream home.

Once you solved the puzzel, which was advertised to take about 350 hours, you had yourself a 12 ton steel house, a grown up cousin to the Erector Sets that maybe served as a fort for the toy soldiers of the era.

Your new Lustron home was not a basic shell; the ranch style homes had dishwashers and other modern appliances, including ceiling radiant heat.

The houses were different from the pre fab houses shipped by Sears and others of the era, because they were metal. You had a choice of colors: pink, yellow, tan, blue, aqua, green and gray. Once assembled you could un-corral your collection of magnets from the refrigerator and use any wall anywhere, seeing as the walls were metal panels of porcelain-coated steel.
So for about $10,000 your magnets could accent any room.

Though the Lustron Corporation shipped to many states, some cities really took a polish to the tight little metal houses, which were, according to the official litrature, "rodent-proof, fire proof, rust proof" and, most important," lightening proof". In fact, a huge cable grounded the house for lightening, though it was more for pubic relations. It was not needed as it couldn't burn. Today, two of the cities with big collections of Lustrons are Des Moines, Iowa, and Lombard, Illinois.

Both cities are convenient on our Lustron tour, as they are adjacent to that other post World War II construction, the Interstate Highway. If you start your tour in the Chicago area, Lombard is a mid western suburb, located just off of Interstate 88. That highway connects with I-80 past the Quad Cities on the Illinois and Iowa state lines and then a few more hours takes you to Des Moines.

Carl Strandlund, a Chicago-based businessman, the creator of the Lustron homes, obtained a government loan after World War II, to produce his maintenance free homes, as the GI's returning in huge numbers would be coming back to a shortage of residential housing.

The first Lustron Home was a two-bedrooms unit,with one bath, at 1000-square feet. It sat on a slab.

In addition to the convenience of the dishwasher and radiant heating panels in the ceilings, which kept air currents from blowing dust through the house, the Lustron had built-in bookcases, china cabinets, large closets, sliding doors and overhead storage cabinets.

Demand ran high for the Lustron Homes, yet the company was in bankruptcy by 1950. There may have been several reasons for the demise of the Lustron Corporation, including a higher price than other pre-fabricated housing, a shortage of steel in the post war era, and an ineffective sales distribution network.

While visiting in Lombard and Des Moines, keep in mind that steel housing today is making a resurgence, in hurricane and tornado prone areas of the United States. In fact, there is a documented case of a Lustron being the only structure standing after an F-5 tornado hit in Greenburg, Kansas, May 2007.

If your travels take you elsewhere, say to Memphis, Tennessee, you can see as I did that even the "King" lived closed to a Lustron Home. Near Graceland, on a pleasant and unassuming lane, is a neat little Lustron tucked away a stone's throw from Elvis' bit more flamboyant home.