For a brief moment, the Lustron home seemed poised to change the landscape of American housing forever. The all-steel, prefabricated home was supposed to solve the postwar housing crisis of the late 1940s and '50s.
Instead, the Lustron Corp. — unable to repay its government grants — went bankrupt in 1950, leaving about 2,500 homes scattered across America. Today, fewer than 20 remain standing in St. Louis. That includes one recently restored in Boulevard Heights.
“It's only held together in most spots with two screws,” said Kaleb Higgins, who has spent months working on the home and documenting the restoration on his YouTube channel. “You could put together an entire house with essentially a wrench and a screwdriver.”
Even from a modern perspective, Higgins said the craftsmanship of the home’s unusual construction — with each panel of enameled steel stamped out in a factory — is stunning.
“It's like nothing else,” he said. “It's really hard to figure out how to work on something like this. Because it's not necessarily like a car — but, it kind of is. And, it's not necessarily like an old refrigerator or stove — but, it kind of is.”
Though the home originally came in a kit, it’s “not like Lego instructions” to repair, Higgins said. “It just took a while to figure out how everything went together, and then how to reverse it so you could fix the individual parts that were broken or missing.”
Though few Lustron homes remain standing, they continue to hold cultural and historic interest. That influence includes the distinctive color and shape of homes in the “Fallout” series of postapocalyptic video games.
Nathan Wilber, board president of ModernSTL, said the real-life failure of Lustron’s attempt to mass produce affordable homes holds lessons for the urban planners and politicians confronting contemporary housing shortages.
“The startup process for this was enormous: Getting the machinery in the factory set up to produce all of these home, and then really to sell the idea to the public, was a challenge,” Wilber explained.
He continued: “[The Lustron Corp.] really did push very hard. They did have a lot of orders. In the end, it just came down to the fact that they weren't able to meet the numbers in production that the government wanted them to. ... At the time of the closing of the factory in 1950, I think they still had 20,000 outstanding orders for homes. They were just getting ready to turn a profit at that time, too — but the government was ready to have them start paying their loans back, and it just wasn't going to work out.”
Related event:
What: Lustron Open House
When: 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 24
Where: Boulevard Heights, St. Louis
Attendees are asked to RSVP to receive the address.
Look through the south St. Louis home through photos by STLPR Visuals Editor Brian Munoz:
To learn more about what it took to restore a Lustron home, and why the original effort failed to live up to its promises of a postwar housing solution, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
