1408C - Lustron Homes: Prefabricated All-Metal Houses, Great Bend

Narrator: After W.W.II Americans needed housing, and they needed it quickly. An entrepreneur named Carl Strandlund created houses of an all-metal construction, with the goal of achieving something more interesting then the run-of-the-mill house - with the added benefit that it was and quick and easy to build. Although a house that was marketed as "A New Standard for Living," it had plenty of battles to mesh with the standards already in place.

Elizabeth Rosin: It is very possible they had a better idea. These houses were very novel. They were very low maintenance. They were very efficient; people who lived in them just loved them.

Narrator: Elizabeth Rosin researched the all-metal homes for the Kansas State Historical society.

Elizabeth: By and large people really loved these homes, they were a novelty. They were very unique and modern and forward looking that they really appealed to that era. The State Historical Society was looking to do a survey of Lustron houses that remained in Kansas and to list some on the National Register of Historic Places. We found 92 Lustrons in the state of Kansas. Then, we found records that indicated there may have been as many as another 8 built, but we just could not find.

Narrator: Promising every dream imaginable to the post-war housewife, the Lustron home turned heads. Some of the features were impressive and perhaps a bit too elaborate, such as the dishwasher that doubled as a washing machine, too complex to be reliable.

Narrator: Delores Fricks has more ties to Lustron houses than just living in one, her father was Dan Brock, a regional distributor of the house for Great Bend and the surrounding area.

Delores Fricks: Well, yea people said "oh, that kind of house, it's never going too, steel frame house, oh that's not going to work. Everybody's not going to want one." But they found out later that you know it was really something after they looked at one. Everybody was interested in them then. And I think they are wonderful because they have a lot of storage in them for one thing. They really are a nice home.

Narrator: Another current Lustron resident in Great Bend had ties back to the beginning of the saga, as he built houses for Dan Brock.

Kelly Puckett: Yea, I just came home from service, hadn't been home for a little while. I'd worked at some other jobs, then went to work for Cookenburg Construction Company, and we was building these farm buildings first and when the Brock come in on this well then he started, that's when he started building the Lustron. When they started out they staked it out and then they dug the foundation. Then the plumber would come in and run the plumbing, then they'd run the cement.

This here would go up like that, then screwed three places could screw it. And the next one, you could either go this way with it, or come down by the window and go this way with it. Now the roof panel, they'd started up at the eave trough, and went up, see. And then, this one here is fastened here is fastened here, every four feet, then the next panel would come up and hook under here and just went right on up.

Delores: Oh, people watched them all the time. Wanted to watch and see what they were doing, how it was going to turn out, you know, and everybody would go by and they'd look. 'Well, I can't imagine what that's going to look like.' You know. But after they would, like I said, them people were really interested in them, but it just didn't last long enough.

Elizabeth: The Lustron was really the ultimate dream home. It was relatively inexpensive. It was fairly affordable to the middle class market. It was low maintenance, virtually no maintenance. Virtually indestructible. It came with this array of built-in features that were designed to appeal to middle-class tastes. Things like the pass-through between the kitchen and the dining room was really touted. There was a china cabinet built-in to the dining room, bookshelves built-in to the living room, vanity in the master bedroom. There were these little features throughout the house, an enormous amount of storage space that really was all targeted towards this middle-class baby boom segment of the population.

Elizabeth: There was a lot of interesting politics involved with the Lustron Corporation. Originally, Carl Strandlund who was the owner and president of Lustron had approached the Senate in about 1946 for an appropriation of steel, which was still a rationed material after W.W.II, to build some gas stations. And the senators that Strandlund met with said, 'well, you know, we really don't think gas stations are a good use of steel, but if you can come up with a solution for the housing shortage the country's facing we can probably come up with an appropriation for you. So Strandlund went back to Chicago where his company was based and contacted a local architect. Took the architect this technology for the porcelain enamel coated steel and together they came up with the design for a simple, basic house.

Narrator: The Lustron Corporation faced challenges from many directions that ultimately shut the company down.

Elizabeth: there were battles between the White House and the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA was reluctant to approve these houses because of their steel construction. But the unions were against it; the lumber industry was against it. There were rumors that Senator Joseph McCarthy was one of the people who brought the company down and ultimately the cost of setting up the facility was such, and gaining acceptance for these very unique houses took so long that when Strandlund went back for his 3rd appropriation, or his 4th appropriation in 1950, Congress refused to provide it and the company was forced into receivership.

Narrator. Dan Brock had to face the reality that the Lustron house could no longer be his mainstay in Great Bend.

Delores: He thought what am I going to do now, got all these houses built you know I built all these houses and these people are going to want parts for them later on, you know, and there is not going to be anything for them. Did I do the right thing, you know?

Elizabeth: One interesting thing that the corporation did, when they started having these hearings before the Senate, about their financial condition, about renewing financial benefits the company asked all of its dealers, nation wide to send a letter to the Senate or to send a letter to the corporate attorney who would present it to the Senate. And we had 4 or 5 of those letters recorded in the congressional record from Kansas's builders and they all said, you know, we think we've hit an upturn, people understand these houses now, they've seen then. If we're allowed to continue selling these houses, our sales are going to keep going up and up. And still the company was far short of its goals, its monthly goals and its annual goals, at that time, but its very likely that it could have been a very profitable venture, in another year or two if it would have been allowed to continue.