Like everyone squeezed by the post-World War II housing shortage, Milly and Bill Sexton were hot to get into a home of their own. After eight years of marriage and two babies, the Porter, Indiana, couple were making do in a cramped cottage owned by Milly’s father when they saw an ad for “the house America has been waiting for.” It was the Lustron Home, a prefabricated ranch house made entirely of steel. It would never need painting, was nearly indestructible, and could be speedily erected on almost any lot. Best of all, it cost thousands of dollars less than a conventional house. The local dealer had put a model up in nearby Michigan City, “so we went over just to see,” Milly Sexton recalls. It was the summer of 1949, and Lustron Corporation was at the apex of its precipitous rise.
“The Lustron story is similar to the story of the Tucker automobile,” says Jim Morrow, chief docent at his own Lustron monument, the All-Steel Historic Home in Chesterton, Indiana. “Tucker and Strandlund both had innovative products that were years ahead of their time, and they both failed on a grand scale, helped along by people who did not want to see them succeed.”
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Morrow is a retired Gary-area home builder and real estate broker who caught Lustron fever a half-dozen years ago. He was attracted by the steel construction and streamlined design, intrigued by the story. When the Norris and Harriet Coambs residence–a three-bedroom Lustron home at 411 Bowser Avenue in Chesterton–came on the market in 1990, Morrow snapped it up. He made a few changes (central air, wall-to-wall carpet, a new furnace), moved in his collection of 1930s steel furniture, and got the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A year ago he opened it to the public during the summer months. It’s a short jaunt from the Sexton place, where Milly and Bill still live, and an hour’s drive from downtown Chicago.
In the 1940s, Strandlund was vice president and general manager of Chicago Vitreous Enamel Product Company, a Cicero firm that had been producing frit for at least two decades. They sold it to customers who made washing machines, refrigerators, stoves, gas stations, and, yes, White Castle restaurants. With the advent of World War II, Chicago Vit became an important producer of armor plate for tanks, but after the war they had a bit of a problem. The company was eager to resume peacetime production, and had an order from Standard Oil of Indiana for 500 gas stations, but they couldn’t get the necessary steel. Steel was still a scarce commodity, allocated by the government for “essential” use only.
Strandlund thought it was a lost cause, Morrow says, and the first six months of 1947 slipped away. But he had picked up some important allies in Washington. An eleventh-hour push by Vermont senator Ralph Flanders and a nudge from the White House came through for him. On June 30, 1947, minutes before its lending authority expired, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation approved a direct government start-up loan of $15.5 million. Additional, shorter-term loans would follow in 1948 and 1949, bringing Lustron’s debt to the government to $37.5 million. Strandlund wanted to manufacture his houses in Chicago (a prototype had been erected in Hinsdale) and requested the Dodge aircraft engine factory on Cicero Avenue, the world’s largest single plant under one roof. But Preston Tucker also had his eye on the Dodge plant, and he got it. Strandlund wound up with the former Curtiss-Wright factory in Columbus, Ohio.
“The bathtub machine, a giant press, sat square in the middle of the works. It was the largest contrivance I had ever seen, reaching about three stories above ground and two below. What it did, as you might suppose, was to take a single, flat piece of metal, make preliminary whirring sounds, and then wallop it decisively into a complete bathtub shape. Its music was impressive.
And then there was the matter of assembly. The Lustron Home arrived at its construction site in three to four thousand pieces, like a giant puzzle. Local crews worked with an erection manual, “but these were carpenters handling steel, not ironworkers,” Morrow says. “They weren’t in the habit of working with such close tolerances. Problems ensued.” Strandlund initially said a Lustron Home could be erected in 150 “man-hours” or less; a revised goal was 350 hours, but with inexperienced crews, assembly was taking as much as 1,000 hours.
