Anyone Own a Lustron Home?

[Bob_In_MN]

This weekend I watched a one hour program detailing the rise and fall of Lustron Homes. The company was around from the late 40's to early 50's and was the idea of a Chicago inventor by the name of Carl Stranglund (sp?).

In response to the housing shortage as GI's returned from the war, this guy came up with an idea to make houses out of iron covered with porcelain. The houses were made on an assembly line. They never got up to the peek capacity of 100 houses per day, but they did build and erect about 2500 homes across the country. We have 7 here in MN and the pics of these homes show them to look much like the day they were built. No painting or reroofing--just get out the garden hose and some soap.

Just wondering if someone on TBN once lived in one and what it was like.

Bob

 

[slowrev]

Were these home kits sold thru Sears Roebuck ? Also I think they had all metal cabinets in the kitchen, etc. I could be confused though /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[AndyM]

No, the kit homes from Sears and Roebuck were sold roughly from 1908 to 1938. All of the framing and trim was already cut to size and numbered as to where it was to go.

My parents live in one that was built in 1933. I think the materials sold for something like $600. I tore out the bathroom walls a couple of years ago, and sure enough, all of the studs have numbers stamped into them. Other than the aluminum siding that was installed, it looks exactly like the photo in the 1933 Sears Modern Homes catalog.

 

[Inspector507]

Bob,
I have worked on a number of them here in the Central Ohio area. Real bugger to run wires for new outlets/switches. That is until you learn the secret........pop a panel off on the outside /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif. Panels are 2'X2' and snap in place.

BTW the plant was here in Columbus, Ohio /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[GaryM]

There's at least one still standing just outside St. Louis in one of our suburbs. It was mentioned in a newspaper article a few months ago. The daughter of the original owner lives there.

Unfortunatly I believe it's to be demolished, or has already been, as part of a redevopment project.

 

[Bob_In_MN]

Inspector,

Stands to reason (given the plant location) that you'd have a few around.

I saw a photo of a Lustron home that had survived a tornado. It looked rough, but was still standing in a location where stick built homes were flattened.

This was a facinating documentary. The idea was a good one and the houses were modern with built in items like closets, counters, book shelves and other space saving items.

It looks like current Lustron owners are a proud group that have formed associations across the nation.

Although they only built and erected 2500 homes, they had orders for 20,000. Looked to me like the company's downfall was a combination of polictical, marketing and distribution forces working against them.

Maybe the most fascinating part of this (to me) was the factory they assembled to make these houses.

Bob

 

[JDgreen227]

Wish I had seen that program, I subscribe to This Old House and they had an article on the Lustron homes some time ago.
Our original house (before I added on) is an Aladdin Redi-Cut home made in Bay City, Michigan, and I have a real interest in kit houses. My brother lived in a Montgomery Ward kit house built about 1930, there were several others making kit homes other than Sears. I would enjoy visiting a Lustron house to learn what they were actually like.

 

[MossRoad]

There are at least 3 of them here, in South Bend, IN. Two of them have been sided over in recent years. I haven't been by the 3rd one lately.

Lots of gas stations were built the same way.

My dad was an architect(among other things) and he always pointed them out to me. Pretty neat.

Here's some neat links about Lustron homes.

http://strandlund.tripod.com/index-9.html

http://home.earthlink.net/~ronusny/

http://www2.indianahistory.org/pub/traces/lustron.html

 

[Bob_In_MN]

JD,

Watch your local public television stations--that's where I saw the show. I believe this was the first run of the program (for our local public station) so you should see it surface on your local station as well and they typically repeat shows from time to time.

Bob

 

[Bob_In_MN]

MossRoad,

That first link is great. It does a good job of describing just how far along this company was. It's not like this guy came up with an idea in the garage and never did anything. The factory was built (in grand scale) and they while they were not producing at their peek capacity, they were pretty far along in this venture.

I didn't check the other links, but when I was searching the web I stumbled across a site that allows you to find existing Lustron homes by state and it actually provides street addresses. In MN they are concentrated in south Minneapolis on 2 streets.

Bob