Free Pre-Fab homes!
Those of you that know me know I have grandiose dreams of building our next home here in the cities. Ideally a modern home. Possibly a prefab.
Alas, most of the prefab hype has been dissappointing. It’s mainly high-end, extremely expensive options that really are targetted at the art-snob crowd rather than the average city dweller. Not to belittle the efforts of some great prefabs from local architects, of course, including the WeeHouse, Hive Modular and the FlatPack. (I’m not going to link to the flatpack web site because it rudely resizes your browser).
Still, most of these are more a dream than practical solutions for our family.
Of course, prefab is nothing new. Our country has always had an off-again/on-again relationship with residential prefab. There was the Sears house. FWL even dabbled in prefab. And then there’s the Lustron homes. A wonderful mid-century home built entirely out of steel. Only 2,500 were made. The few that survived are often considered historical landmarks.
The US Marine Corps Base Quantico has a bunch of them that they need to get rid of, and are asking anyone that wants one to submit an RFP and come pick it up. If one has the truck, and a few weeks worth of vacation time, this could be a great opportunity.
(Via inhabitat)
4 Comments
Darrel – there are a few of these Lustron homes in Minneapolis today (in the Nokomis neighborhood, if memory serves.)
Great find.
Sadly, this offer expired yesterday.
That’s alright. As cool as the Lustron home is they have two issues.
1) The heating system is force air into the walls, from the celling. Needless to say, heat rises, and the Lustrons are notoriously cold.
2) A lot of Lustrons were butcherd by people who don’t know what they have. They do things like put vinyl siding on it, ruining the exterior metal panels and their porcelain enameling.
I saw one for sale in Minneapolis, that suffered the same problem. Plus they tore the inside to pieces in order to “remodel” what they should have left alone.
The upside of a Lustron is that they are great for people with allergies.
i think modern homes like the flatpack, weehouse and many other flavors are wonderful and look forward to building one someday because i really just find that there is no passion in standard home building these days.
unfortunately for those of us that have owned a Lustron and had to resell for whatever reason, the Lustron design and construction becomes a large problem. unless you have an fairly long timeframe and arent concerned about making any money on the sale (as in your broker, or the buyers broker if you FSBO, will make more than you), you nead to do some “butchering”.
the Lustron in general is really not a home for the extreme climate that is MN. The heating system is a joke (not efficient or logical), and to keep it cool you have to install window units and try to seal up evey nook and cranny with 3m tape (not great for those cool summer nights when you want the windows open.
that said, if you’re a history buff and want to own a part of it i would buy a pristine Lustron and turn it into a museum.
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