Lustron homes, Columbus’ ill-fated metallic solution to the post-World War II housing shortage, reached a production milestone on Sept. 2, 1948, when the first steel panel was produced.
Hundreds of 2-by-2-foot enamel-coated steel panels were the chief components of the homes. Bolted to steel frames, they formed the interior and exterior walls as well as the roof. Lustron owners used magnets to hang pictures.
Operating out of a war-surplus Curtiss-Wright airplane plant on E. 5th Avenue, Chicagoan Carl Strandlund used $37 million in federal loans to set up a 107-acre factory in 1947 to mass-produce prefabricated two- and three-bedroom steel homes.
The company’s first ad, a $50,000 two-page center spread in the April 19, 1948, issue of Life magazine, said that the plant used the “same mass-production, unit assembly and precision methods that have made the motor car the greatest industrial achievement and economic benefit of the century.”
Each house, which was initially priced at $7,000, used 12.5 tons of steel and 1 ton of enamel. At its peak, the plant reportedly used more electricity than the rest of Columbus combined.
Strandlund predicted that he could produce 100 home “kits” a day. The 30,000-piece kits were delivered to home sites around the country by bright blue and yellow Lustron trucks.
Each kit, which could be erected in as little as three days, included everything needed to build a home on the customer’s concrete pad, from welded wall frames to appliances, including a novel dishwasher/clothes-washer combination.
However, the company went bust in 1950 after producing just 2,500 homes. The Ohio Historical Society, which is preparing a Lustron exhibit to open this year, said Lustron folded because it was not able to pay back the millions of dollars in U.S. government loans that it had used as start-up money.
Suggestions for Mileposts that will run this bicentennial year can be sent to Gerald Tebben, Box 82125, Columbus, OH 43202, or email gtebben@. columbus.rr.com