By Patricia Kime
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, November 1, 2008

For 57 years, it sat at the corner of South 12th and Frederick streets in Arlington, a dove-gray porcelain enamel house that was supposed to help solve the nation's post-World War II housing crunch.

The Lustron, as it is called, is a metal, rectangular prefabricated house produced in 1949 by the Lustron Corp. of Columbus, Ohio. One of 11 built in Arlington County, its preservation touched off a firestorm regarding proper use of taxpayer funds and what constitutes "historic." Maligned at county board meetings as an indulgent government expense and called "uninteresting" and "ugly" by many local residents, it faced the wrecking ball.

Yet the county did save it, and this week, Arlington's Lustron ended a three-month stint as part of an exhibit on prefabricated housing at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

"It's been a really amazing roller coaster of highs and lows," Arlington County preservation planner Cynthia Liccese-Torres said. "I think when we got the call from MoMA, it affirmed for the county that we did the right thing."

The 1,000-square-foot house is one of about 2,680 built by Lustron, founded by Minneapolis entrepreneur Carl Strandlund, who thought assembly-line techniques could solve a nationwide housing shortage. Backed by government loans, Strandlund acquired a Columbus aircraft plant and embarked on his dream to provide "the house America's been waiting for."

Lustrons were built of steel, from foundation bolts to roof shingles. Touted as impervious to fire, rain and pests, everything in them -- except the tile floors -- was metal or porcelain-enamel-covered metal, including closets, vanities, built-in bookshelves, sideboards and china cabinets. Lustrons arrived with nifty combination washing machine/dishwashers and had "Gas-O-Matic" or "Oil-O-Matic" furnace-powered radiant heat. With their compact design, fresh color schemes and efficient layouts, they epitomized 1950s modernism and optimism, Liccese-Torres said.

"These houses were open and so well laid out, with fabulous built-ins and amenities that, I think, combined with the creative advertising of the company, really made them appealing," she said.

As with previous attempts to mass-produce homes, however, Lustron faltered. Despite receiving 20,000 orders and thousands of letters of interest, the company filed for bankruptcy in 1950. Historians debate the root of Lustron's problems -- some say corporate mismanagement caused the company's demise, while others say it was the victim of political duplicity -- but all agree that the product was difficult to construct and often challenged communities' zoning laws and building codes.

Arlington's cluster was the second-largest enclave in Virginia, after Quantico Marine Corps Base, which once had 60. By the time Naval Research Laboratory scientist Clifford Krowne bought the South 12th Street home in 2005, the number of Arlington Lustrons had dwindled to six. Krowne offered to donate his house to the county if it were removed from his property, and after a year of consideration, county board members voted to take him up on the offer. In April 2006, the county disassembled the mint-condition Lustron and stored it in a Chantilly warehouse at an initial cost of $21,900.

The effort to preserve the little lunchbox house was not met with universal enthusiasm, however. The Arlington County Taxpayers Association fought efforts to finance its disassembly and later, the group dissuaded the board from spending $60,000 to move it to MoMA. (An agreement with MoMA, coupled with private funding, financed the project.)

Resident John Antonelli spent days at county board meetings fighting the acquisition, too. "It's a lot of money, and I don't think it's that historic. In the grand scheme of things, Paul Revere never rode here, George Washington never slept here. There's no 'there' there," Antonelli said.

But officials disagreed, and in 2006, a group from Capstone Properties, the county and the Arlington Heritage Alliance took the house apart, using an official Lustron "erection manual" as their guide.

"It was quite a challenge," said Arlington Heritage Alliance member Tom Dickinson. "It was put together well, and the rubber gaskets were stuffed so tightly, we had to get screwdrivers in there to pry them out."

The project took four weeks, and the structure was placed in storage while county officials decided what to do with it. An agreement to display it at the National Building Museum fizzled just days before the MoMA opportunity surfaced, Liccese-Torres said. MoMA wanted a Lustron for its exhibit "Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling," and Arlington's pristine two-bedroom Westchester Deluxe model was exactly what it sought for the exhibit, which ran through the summer.

The week of Oct. 21, a group of Arlingtonians returned to MoMA to deconstruct the Lustron and bring it back to Virginia. The house again sits in storage while board officials and staff decide what to do with it. Officials have discussed turning it into a county-owned guesthouse, a visitors' center or a museum. Eventually, they will solicit input from Arlington residents, Liccese-Torres said.

Chances are they won't take Antonelli up on his suggestion. "Arlington's a green county -- they should recycle it," he said.