Beverly Shores, Indiana

The first night we were gone on our road trip, we stayed near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.Parts of it are beautiful, even amazing (giant sand dunes!) but this part (above), maybe not so much. Busloads of school kids came to splash around in the shadow of the power plant's cooling tower. It looks like a nuclear plant, but it's not.

Nearby Beverly Shores, IN was our next stop. Some of its homes were transported there via barge across Lake Michigan after their exhibition at the 1933-34 "A Century of Progress" Chicago's World's Fair; some of the beachfront homes are abandoned. There are three existing Lustrons in the town. We found two of them. This yellow one at 729 Lake Front Drive, which overlooks Lake Michigan.

This blue (or blue-green, I find it difficult to discern the difference) Lustron below had no house number on it. It was on Montana just off Lake Front Drive.

Mission complete! Last of the Lustron photos.

Here are the rest of the fifteen extant (according to the Lustron Registry) Lustron houses in Milwaukee, in the order in which I photographed them. Shout out to the Wauwatosa branch of the Milwaukee Public Library for helping me out.

Lustron House at 403 N. 91st Street.

Lustron at 2971 N. 91st Street. Small porch area is enclosed.



Lustron at 3474 N. 93rd St. On the corner. Sided pale blue.




3014 N. 83rd. Screen porch added. Garage is as seen below. Appears to be covered with some sort of stucco and then painted a similar shade of blue.

The garage: the ghosts of the square tiles are visible.

3205 N. 82nd, on the corner.

More lustron photos

As promised, here is another group of Lustron photos. These are from the north side of Milwaukee. I hope the Lustron preservationists do not get too upset. Some changes have been made to the exteriors.

Above, Lustron House at 3535 W. Marion. The Lustron Registry incorrectly lists it as 4276 N. 36th Street, which is the correct coordinates (approximately) but the wrong number. The house is now sided.

3825 W. Marion, above. Yellow. Incorrectly listed in the registry as blue-green.

Above- 4433 N. Sherman. Tan.

5520 W. Philip, above - listed in the Lustron registry as simply "55th & Phillip (sic) Place." It is well kept and neat.


5861 N. 74th Street, above. Please don't cry. It looks nice. The bones underneath are Lustron with a whole new skin. Even the decorative zig-zag accent has been changed to a simple rectangular support.

Many, many thanks to Mike for getting out in the city with me to get these shots!

Guest post! New Urbanism!!

Since I started my blog in March, I have gotten many more emails about it than comments on the blog itself. The emails are much more positive and enlightening than many of the comments, something that is a little disappointing; they're more personal and less interactive, but all very interesting. This is one that I received yesterday- I received permission from the author (Beth, of the ESL program for which I volunteer) to use it as a guest post.

"On your blog, I saw the word Lustron. I had never heard that word before and looked it up.

I am fascinated by architecture. Learning about a new type of home bought back a bunch of memories.

The most recent memory is the new pre-fab house that was launched this month or last:
http://www.greenpacks.org/2009/05/07/clayton-homes-announces-green-modular-i-house/

Our neighborhood in Manhattan (for nine years) was like a village, with neighbors who had lived on our street for decades. When we moved to Saginaw, Michigan in 1992, I was depressed by the urban sprawl to the point of experiencing physical pain. I missed city life so much, and Saginaw’s shell of a city center would have pleased and refreshed me 20 years before. Saginaw was being destroyed because of neglect and pure ignorance. I tried to get involved in preservation activities, but the efforts of a few were no match for cluelessness, clannishness, and corruption.

I read The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. She was so right in her critique of “modern” urban planning and how it had ruined inner cities. To see her predictions manifested in Saginaw was heartbreaking.

Just today I googled her name and came up with this: http://www.janeswalkusa.org/who-is-jane-jacobs

In Milwaukee, it seems that there is a resurgence of interest in Jane Jacob’s common sense. As I drive around in parts that were once blighted and are now dotted with livable, attractive, urban HOMES (rather than PROJECTS), it certainly seems that the spirit of Jane Jacobs has been at work. If you design a “Jane walk” and post it on your blog, I’ll take the walk. It has been years since I thought of things like this.

Beth

Is anyone interested in taking the challenge? The "Jane Walk" is an interesting concept: regular citizens lead an urban walking tour, free of charge. Take a look at the link. Let me know what you think.

More Lustron photos

I promised more photos of the Milwaukee Lustron houses and here are a couple of them- two right next to each other on North 27th Street, just north of Hampton.

Lustron House at 4964 N. 27th StreetLustron House at 4956 N. 27th Street
This tan one has the matching garage.

One of the reasons I love these so much (besides their having been such a mystery to me for so long) is their whole space-age aesthetic, as well as their diminutive size.

I thought this would be a good time to put up a photo of the sculpture in front of the Atkinson Library, 1960 W. Atkinson Ave. I don't know anything about it. It would look good in front of a Lustron house though. That branch opened in 1961. The Lustron Company built its homes in the late 1940's, so they are not of the same time period, but somehow they have a similar anachronistic appeal for me.

Lustron houses

Blue Lustron House at 3802 W Capitol Drive, Milwaukee.

One of my longtime fascinations is Lustron houses. I didn't know until four years ago that they have a name; I used to call them Tile Houses. I happened to grow up near a rich cluster of Lustrons.- all blue-green, except for one which was tan. I would go out on my bike and try to find more, and had a route of sorts to go and visit them. This was of course pre-internet- now all of their addresses are on the online Lustron Registry. Apparently other people appreciate them too, since they also have their own Preservation Association. Lustron at 2746 N 82nd Street

In a 2005 article from Chicago's New City newspaper, Douglas Knerr (author of Suburban Steel: The Magnificent Failure of the Lustron Corporation) said that he first became interested in the Lustron houses when his cousin married a boy who had grown up in a Lustron house in Ohio, affording Knerr the opportunity to tour the inside. Knerr "instantly noticed that his cousin's new family had no use for nails or for a hammer. They hung all their photos and artwork directly to their home's walls using magnets. And maintenance? That was minimal. Nothing chipped or faded." But Knerr saw something larger: "These homes are an important part of our history. They reflect an effort by the government to help provide affordable houseing on a mass scale, something that we are still wrestling with today."

Last year, a DVD was released about the sad collapse of the visionary Lustron company (it was a conspiracy, for you believers). I recently was told by a reliable source that my mom reads all of my blog posts, and since my birthday is coming up soon perhaps she will come up with a great gift idea for me.Lustron at 2777 N. 82nd Street; as you can see, it has aluminum siding now.

I'm going to try to photograph all of the other Milwaukee Lustrons in the near future.