A Lustron house came to the building site on a single flatbed trailer, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. The all-steel home had about 3,000 parts, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Inventor Carl Strandlund set up the Lustron Corporation on Oct. 31, 1947, using a former Curtiss-Wright plant in Columbus, Ohio, per the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. The plant had built fighter planes, according to Ohio Magazine.
The money came from the federal Reconstruction Finance Corp. It made six loans totaling $37.5 million, the first for $12.5 million, according to Construction Physics.
The first house came off the line in April 1948, per Construction Physics. The homes had enameled steel panels, roughly 1,000 square feet, and two bedrooms, according to the Inquirer. The price was $7,000 to $9,000, plus $2,000 to $3,000 to put the house up, per Construction Physics.
Not everyone was charmed. “I have only seen one of them, but it sort of reminds you of a bathtub,” Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas said, per the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
Output peaked at 26 houses a day in August 1949, then fell to six a day by October, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Construction Physics said the factory would have needed to reach roughly 35 a day to make a profit.
Costs rose above those of comparable site-built homes, and dealers needed about $50,000 in working capital, per Construction Physics. The company lost $1.5 million a month, according to Ohio Magazine. The Reconstruction Finance Corp. ended the loans on Dec. 28, 1949.
A foreclosure suit followed on Feb. 22, 1950, and the last house shipped on June 6, 1950, per the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Lustron went bankrupt in 1950, according to the Inquirer.
Strandlund had claimed 20,000 firm orders, but only 2,680 houses were built, per the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. About 8,000 orders were left unfilled, according to Ohio Magazine.
Estimates of how many Lustrons survive range from about 1,200 to 2,000. Lustron house #549 has been on display at the Ohio History Center since 2013. “It remains one of our most asked-about and visited exhibits,” center director Jen Cassidy told Ohio Magazine.
Lustron was not the only factory dream to run into trouble with public money. John DeLorean’s Belfast car plant took £77 million in British government funding and failed in 1982.
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