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://www.amazon.com/Lustron-Home-History-Prefabricated-Experiment/dp/0786426551 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://www.amazon.com/SUBURBAN-STEEL-MAGNIFICENT-FAILURE-LANDSCAPE/dp/0814252737 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://www.ohiohistory.org/visit/exhibits/ohio-history-center-exhibits/1950s-building-the-american-dream/lustron-about/lustron-library/erection-manual 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://whitehallhistoricalsociety.weebly.com/lustron.html 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://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4832937 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/21647262 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/41822136 https://www.vrbo.com/1375987 https://www.vrbo.com/432058 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/44593287 Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter 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: http://vox.com/contribute-now 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: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom