It was supposed to be the future of housing. What went wrong? Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO Why aren’t homes made of steel? In the late 1940s, one company posed that question. Lustron was a prefabricated home that was supposed to be the future of housing. So why did it fail? For just a few years — 1947 to 1950 — the Columbus, Ohio-based Lustron represented the future of housing. Using a steel frame and porcelain enamel-covered steel panels, Lustron made homes in a factory and shipped them around the country. Vox’s Phil Edwards visited a Lustron home just outside Dayton, Ohio, to experience the unusual features, like magnetic walls, for himself. This home’s quirks weren’t relegated to the materials. Through a combination of government funding sources, an attempt to reinvent the production cycle for home, and a unique distribution plan, the Lustron home helps explain how housing does — and doesn’t — work in America. Further reading: https://ift.tt/g6kVdLX Tom Fetters’s book, The Lustron Home, is packed full of charts, graphs, original letters, and a clear and concise history of the company’s successes and failures. https://ift.tt/iV6XbIJ Suburban Steel, Douglas Knerr’s look at Lustron, covers similar ground, but with more of an eye toward government drama and the complexities of public funding for a private business. https://ift.tt/ptOLvC1 Located in Columbus, the Ohio History Connection has a reconstructed Lustron as an exhibit. They also have online resources including the linked instruction manual. https://ift.tt/xuY2Psc The Whitehall Historical society writes here about their reconstruction of a Lustron home. If you want to stay in a Lustron, you can. These are just a few of the Lustrons available on vacation sites like Airbnb and VRBO (including Barbara Rose’s home in West Alexandria). https://ift.tt/2x3Lhup https://ift.tt/0B1aYOo https://ift.tt/5SBcord https://ift.tt/S0N9gBe https://ift.tt/SF0tQc7 https://ift.tt/3hFJE0L Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: https://ift.tt/azHrY4k Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com Support Vox's reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: https://ift.tt/qwGI03H Shop the Vox merch store: http://vox.com/store Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE Follow Vox on Facebook: http://facebook.com/vox Follow Vox on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom Follow Vox on TikTok: https://ift.tt/nmZ1FIP
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