<\/p>\n
Sooner than later, this tiny prefabricated steel house on West\u00a0Amherst Avenue\u00a0\u2014 made by the Lustron Corp. and snapped together in 1949 \u2014 will become a Dallas landmark, likely the city\u2019s smallest.<\/p>\n
Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n
The fire in June likely would have claimed any other home, especially one so small \u2013 1,040 square feet, to be precise. If the flames hadn\u2019t devoured it, the firefighters most assuredly would have destroyed it entering through windows and attacking through the roof. Yet the house on Amherst Avenue still stands, its stark interior scorched, yes, but its maize-yellow exterior little altered save for windows filled with white-painted plywood and a roofline adorned with strips of blue tarpaulin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only damage,\u201d preservation architect\u00a0Ron Siebler<\/a> said a few weeks ago, \u201cwas caused by firefighters just doing their job.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n I met\u00a0Siebler at Dallas City Hall on the first Monday of March, the day the City Council\u2019s Economic Development Committee took public comment<\/a> on the billion-dollar price tag placed upon the salvation of I.M. Pei\u2019s building. Siebler was there on behalf of the house he\u2019s about to begin repairing; there also to show his support for a building in jeopardy of demolition.<\/p>\n City Council chambers were stuffed that afternoon; it would have been standing-room-only if such a thing were allowed. Lined up behind the open\u00a0mic were former council members and ex-appointees decrying the rush to flee City Hall, relocation experts and business owners scoffing at inflated costs, regular citizens angry about even the possibility of razing The People\u2019s House so a billionaire could build a basketball arena.<\/p>\n At the very same time, around the corner, in the smaller, far emptier briefing room on City Hall\u2019s sixth floor, the Landmark Commission was meeting.\u00a0On its agenda was that little house on Amherst<\/a> spared from last summer\u2019s conflagration because it\u2019s made of metal. Entirely of metal, too, from its exterior siding to its window sills to its kitchen cabinets and bedroom vanity.<\/p>\n A fire last year scorched the interior of the Luston House on West Amherst Avenue. It should be easy enough to clean. That was the point of making a house out of steel, after all.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n The\u00a0Lustron House is so named for the long-defunct Ohio-based manufacturer that, from 1948 to 1950, offered inexpensive, (relatively) easily assembled homes made from prefabricated porcelain-enameled steel sheets. Of the tens of thousands promised to post-warriors in need of fast, affordable housing, fewer 2,500 were ever made, according to the website Lustron Research<\/a>, with an estimated 1,500 having endured. Of those, only a handful still stand in Texas<\/a>, most in El Paso. There\u2019s just the one in Dallas, around the corner from the restaurant Jos\u00e9 on Lovers Lane.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Built in 1949 for a mere $9,741, according to old newspaper accounts, that sole survivor is now bound to become a Dallas landmark, making it nearly impossible to raze. It will likely be the smallest historic landmark in town.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dallas Central Appraisal District records show it to be owned by a revocable trust. But here\u2019s a secret: The house was last purchased in October 1988 by philanthropist Margaret McDermott, whose name remained on the deed until April 2008. Mary McDermott Cook said this week her mother bought it for\u00a0Rosie Mendoza, who worked for Margaret for more than 40 years. It has remained in the Mendoza family ever since.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was \u2013 it\u00a0is \u2013 an amazing little house,\u201d said Cook.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In his request, made at Cook\u2019s urging, former Preservation Dallas executive director and current Landmark commissioner David\u00a0Preziosi hailed the house as \u201ca rare remaining example of manufactured housing from the 1940s [that\u2019s] certainly worthy of consideration for landmarking.\u201d With little discussion, his fellow commissioners unanimously agreed.<\/p>\n Afterward, I said to\u00a0Siebler that it must have been odd to have come to City Hall to protect this tiny metal house on the very day the council was beginning its debate about the possible end of the mammoth concrete public house on Marilla Street. He said he\u2019d just been looking out at downtown through the giant windows in City Hall\u2019s Flag Room, outside council chambers. He said that \u201cwe have lost our desire to be awed,\u201d by things both great and small.<\/p>\n The Lustron House stands as our local testament to Chicago industrialist Carl Strandlund\u2019s dream of making homes easy to afford and even easier to build following World War II. There are\u00a0some 50 Lustron homes on the National Register of Historical Places<\/a>; there\u2019s also an oft-cited book devoted to the study of the \u201cpostwar prefabricated housing experiment.\u201d<\/a> Even its name has a ring of antiquated magic about it: Lustron, short for \u201cluster on steel.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s extremely unique,\u201d said\u00a0Siebler, whom I first met years ago, shortly after he\u2019d reconstructed the World War II-era German boxcar on display at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was not even aware that type of house existed, though it makes perfect sense given the housing demand following World War II,\u201d\u00a0Siebler said. \u201cIt\u2019s a combination of IKEA and an Erector set, a house screwed and bolted together.\u201d<\/p>\n There were supposed to be tens of thousands of houses across the country like this Lustron home in Dallas. But in the end, only a few thousand were made. And even fewer survive today.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n Which took about two weeks, give or take, using\u00a0the Lustron Corp.\u2019s 207-page \u201cerection manual\u201d<\/a> as a guide.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Locals first heard of the\u00a0Lustron House on March 27, 1949, when The Dallas Morning News ran a story about its construction beneath the headline, \u201cFirst All-Steel Prefab House Being Erected Here.\u201d The piece advertised the house on Amherst as a \u201cdemonstrator\u201d that could be built within five days, complete with built-in bookshelves, a dishwasher and a hot-water heater.<\/p>\n The story promised tens of thousands more just like it for under $10,000 (around $130,000 today). Deep Ellum-based Vilay Co., co-owned by the Vilbig family for whom the West Dallas street is named, was offering \u201calmost immediate delivery\u201d on the \u201cfireproof, ratproof, termite-proof and decay-proof\u201d homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n On May 1, 1949, a front-page\u00a0Dallas Morning News story heralded: \u201cAll-Steel House Open to Visitors,\u201d from 1 to 8 p.m. every day. It cost the curious a quarter to enter, with all the money going to the Disabled American Veterans. In the same edition, Ford Radio in Oak Cliff took out an ad touting that it had furnished all the Frigidaire appliances that filled \u201cthe home America has been waiting for\u201d at 5006 W. Amherst.<\/p>\n America would have to keep waiting: By 1950\u00a0Lustron was bankrupt, despite having received $37 million from the federal government. By June of 1950, this paper was running stories about how taxpayers had helped \u201csubsidize\u201d Sen. Joe McCarthy, who\u2019d taken $10,000 from Lustron to write a 7,000-word booklet on housing.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n When the Lustron House was built in 1949, everything inside was made of steel, including the sinks, vanities and bookshelves. A fire last year damaged the house. But it couldn’t destroy it.<\/p>\n Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n The\u00a0Lustron House\u2019s owners have been few: first, Disabled American Veterans national executive committee member P. Dale Jackson<\/a>, according to a 1958 letter to the editor of the Dallas Times Herald; then, I Love Flowers owner Ed Malinoski, who told the Herald in 1987 that his renovations included scrubbing off \u201clayers of yellowing from cigarette smoke on the light gray steel-paneled walls.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Malinoski eventually sold it to McDermott, but he always regretted it. \u201cI wish I had it back,\u201d the florist told David Dillon, then this newspaper\u2019s architecture critic, in 1989. Dillon compared the house to the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller, and noted that \u201cit looks as good today as when it came off the truck 40 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The same can\u2019t be said of the house today \u2014 not yet, anyway. Siebler has begun restoring the window frames damaged by the firefighters, and will soon start work on replacing the roof panels. He\u2019s just waiting on city permits to begin rewiring the house and installing new heating, air conditioning and plumbing.<\/p>\n Sometime after that, the\u00a0Lustron House will become a Dallas landmark. Which means that tiny prefabricated steel house on Amherst may well outlive the brutalist colossus on Marilla. What a time to be alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sooner than later, this tiny prefabricated steel house on West\u00a0Amherst Avenue\u00a0\u2014 made by the Lustron Corp. and snapped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,87999,88952,93056],"class_list":{"0":"post-243469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-news","11":"tag-tp-architecture","12":"tag-tp-dallas-city-hall","13":"tag-tp-homes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775038934_972_rawImage.jpg\" "\\"#\\"")
<\/p>\n