The Harold Hess Lustron House, located at 421 Durie Avenue,Closter NJ 07624, is currently owned by the Borough of Closter and is operated as a house museum by the Friends of the Lustron Committee of the Closter Historic Society.  It is open to the public on the second Saturday of each month from noon to 2 p.m.  

HISTORY

In 1949, Harold Hess, a recently married returning WWII veteran saw a sample Lustron House displayed at Palisades Amusement Park. In 1950, he purchased the Westchester Deluxe model with attached breezeway and one car garage. Originally he wanted the 3 bedroom, two car garage model but felt fortunate to receive what he got as the company was already heading into bankruptcy. Mr. Hess faced six months of planning and zoning board meetings in Fort Lee. He failed to get a permit to erect the modern metal house and turned to the Closter area where more relaxed building codes provided an opportunity to build the novel construction of the all-steel prefabricated house.

World War II vet Hess never lost faith in his house of tomorrow and was the proud owner till his death in 2004. He raised his family here and remained pleased with the house until the end, noting that there were some adjustments such as finding repairmen with enough problem solving creativity to make repairs to a steel house with a combination dishwasher/clothes washing machine next to and filled by the kitchen sink faucet. Other minor matters were hanging pictures with large industrial magnets and interior spring cleaning with automobile wax. The attractive steel walls never need painting or wallpapering so the color scheme never changed.

Closter’s Harold Hess Lustron House, listed on both the state and national registers of historic places, was scheduled for demolition in 2014. Thanks to advocacy by then-mayor Sophie Heymann and positive action by the Zoning Board, an unusual compromise was reached with the developer-owner of the property to donate the historic house to the Borough of Closter. The Borough of Closter applied for a $25,000 grant in 2016 to have a Preservation Plan written for the Lustron House. The grant was awarded by the New Jersey State Historic Preservation Office with monies provided by the National Park Service and did not require any local matching funds. The plan was completed in 2017, work has begun and will be implemented fully over time.

The house, located at 421 Durie Avenue, has a blue Bergen County Historical Society marker in the front yard that states:

“To ease post WWII housing shortages, the Lustron Corp. of Ohio made an unique house of all pre-fabricated steel parts on an assembly line basis and shipped them directly to owners’ lots. Harold Hess purchased a Westchester Deluxe model with attached garage from an NJ dealer and assembled it on this site in 1950. All walls, roof and chimney are porcelain enameled steel panels. Between 1948 and 1950, Lustron made 2,498 homes.”

There are only two Lustron houses remaining in Bergen County. The other is located in Alpine and has no local historic preservation protection. Approximately nine have survived statewide and an estimated 1500 remain nationwide.

“Lustron” is a trademarked name that stands for “Luster on Steel.” The shiny efficiency of these homes mirrors the optimism that was felt by this country as its GI’s re- turned home triumphant from the Great War. Lustron homes are one-story ranch-style houses built on concrete slabs. They are very modest in size, averaging 1000 square feet of living space. Most of the Lustrons built were two- bedroom models, although a three-bedroom model did be- come available towards the end of production.

The Lustron house was the brainchild of Carl G. Strandlund, who saw the possibilities of utilizing steel left behind from the war effort to create needed housing. Strandlund had previously worked for the Chicago Vitreous Enamel Products Company that manufactured steel enamelware for refrigerators, stoves, and other household appliances. Connecting this technology to the housing industry was the ticket to success in securing federal funding necessary to start production. The Lustron Corporation opened a one-million-square-foot plant in Columbus, Ohio in 1947. But just as quickly as the company’s star rose, it plummeted, and the Lustron Corporation closed in 1950 due to overwhelming debt.

Elements of streamline design abound in Lustron homes, which feature built-in vanities, bookshelves and dining room/kitchen cabinetry, as well as pocket doors and sliding closet doors – all made of porcelain-enameled steel. Lustron homes were marketed as having “cheerful convenience” and “easy-to-keep-clean brightness.” They cost approximately $10,000 each and came in four colors: maize yellow, surf blue, desert tan and dove gray. All of the pieces of a Lustron home could be carried to the building site in one specially designed truck, and construction could be completed in as little as one week.

Interesting features of the Lustron house included the “Thor” dishwasher-clothes washing machine that was located in the cabinetry next to the kitchen sink. Another unique aspect of these homes was the heating system, which supplied radiant heat through a plenum chamber in the space above the metal ceiling panels. Each Lustron house came fitted with a metal identification tag stamped with the model and serial numbers and located on the back wall of the utility room.