A New Idea of Home: Closter's Lustron House

Here at Hidden New Jersey, we’re big fans of lemonade makers – entrepreneurial spirits who make the most of what some less creative folks might find to be a problem. Edison’s Portland cement business, for example, capitalized on crushing technology that had been used in the inventor’s ill-fated iron ore mining venture, eventually leading to an outstanding, durable concrete product. As you’ll recall from our previous travels, Edison extolled the virtues of the product for use in everything from road surfaces to inexpensive and quickly-erected housing developments.

Another example of ingenuity stands at 421 Durie Avenue in Closter. The one-story enamel-clad home and garage is one of a handful of still-extant examples of a company’s efforts to overcome one post-World War II crisis by attempting to solve another. Originally owned by the Hess family, the house is one of the 2680 prefabricated housing units made by the Lustron Corporation, a division of Chicago Vitreous Enamel Company. It would be no surprise if it puts you in the mind of mid-20^th century prefabricated structures like gas stations – Chicago Vit made those, too. Expanding into the post-World War II housing business was one executive’s means of keeping the company in business when the supply of steel was scarce and regulated by the federal government.

Before we get to the business end, though, let’s take a look at the Lustron House that’s been lovingly restored by dedicated friends and the Closter Historical Society. I checked it our on a pre-COVID weekend afternoon during one of its monthly open houses, announced on the Friends of the Hess Lustron House Facebook page.   

The Lustron’s enamel-clad panels and boxy form make it easy to spot among the other homes in the neighborhood. A distinctive zig-zag metal pillar holds up the corner of the roof over a small concrete porch that leads to the front door. Walk through that door, and you’re already in a small living room, tastefully decorated with 1950’s era furnishings. You’d expect that a metal house would feel antiseptic, but it felt cozy despite the metal walls and ceiling, and the linoleum flooring underfoot. As manufactured, the house was equipped with radiant heat, which oddly worked through the ceiling panels, rather than the floor.

Just to the left of the living room, there’s a dining area with a pass-through opening in the adjacent wall.

Step through the doorway and you’re in a small but well-appointed kitchen whose cupboards are stacked with Boontonware tableware and 50’s era grocery items. A mid-century range/oven and refrigerator stand ready for use.

An adjacent laundry room still holds a rotary clothes press on a desk with matching chair – the perfect setting for a mid-century homemaker to continue with her chores even as she rested her feet. The only thing missing from the Hess domestic executive’s original domain was the Thor Automagic, a space-saving combination clothes washing machine, dishwasher and kitchen sink. Yes, you read that right! The same innovative device could wash your clothes and your dinner plates, though not at the same time. Like many other Lustron homeowners, the Hess family eventually discovered that the Thor left much to be desired. Perhaps they grew weary of having to change out the machine’s drums; in any case, they replaced Thor with a standard sink that remains today.

Two bedrooms and a full bath make up the remainder of the house, each with a space-saving pocket door to afford privacy.

The master bedroom feels fairly spacious, with plenty of built-in storage that brought to mind an oversized office cubicle, but without the cloth wall panels. Metal-doored closets stood on either side of a long, built-in vanity backed by counter to ceiling mirrors that lend depth to the room. The second bedroom, decorated with vintage toys, games and a typewriter, probably would have been cramped living quarters for siblings to share. A Fort Lee High School banner was stuck to the wall with magnets, a reminder that interior décor in a Lustron couldn’t rely on the typical hammer and nails to hang pictures or keepsakes. You could, however, decorate your bedroom wall with refrigerator magnets!

Apart from the large enamel tiles lining the walls, the sole bathroom in the house is pretty typical for a mid-century house. The only replacement seems to be the sink and vanity combo, which ironically seems the most worn of anything in the home.

The entire house is less than 1100 square feet: tight quarters for today’s McMansion families but pretty much the standard for starter housing in postwar America. A Lustron would have felt spacious for young couples relegated to living with their parents and in-laws due to post-war housing shortages.

It might have been just the ticket for recently-married Harold Hess. Lustron caught his eye during a 1949 visit to Palisades Amusement Park, where a model was displayed by the company's local dealer, Better Living Homes of Maplewood. For less than $10,000, the dealer promised that a team of his workers could build the house in less than 360 man hours.

The house purchased, Hess needed a place to put it. He originally hoped to build in Fort Lee but found local planning and zoning boards less than receptive to an enamel-clad house. After a six-month ordeal, he found building codes to be more lenient in Closter, where he got clearance to build at the corner lot at Durie Avenue and Legion Place. The company delivered all the parts for its Westchester model home to the site in one of its trademark tractor trailers, ready for assembly, complete with an optional garage and enclosed connector corridor.

The Lustron Corporation promised a low-maintenance house, and apparently that’s what they delivered. Aside from the problematic Thor Automagic and some predictable wear on light switches and some of the cabinetry, the place looks pretty darn good. The walls and ceilings could be rubbed down with a little wax when they needed touching up.

With all of these advantages, why isn’t Lustron still in business today? A litany of issues arose fairly quickly, due to poor planning that couldn't be overcome by the extensive sales campaign that had gotten so many people excited about the future of prefab steel homes. In fact, Hess reportedly felt fortunate to get his house at all, given that the company was headed into bankruptcy.

In creating a national sales network, the Lustron folks apparently didn’t consider the expense and complications of shipping their product from their Ohio factory to building sites throughout the country. The interstate highway system was yet to be built, and shipping by train would still require transport from railyard to the ultimate destination. The Lustron Corporation was left to create its own shipping infrastructure, using specially-designed trucks that could accommodate the full weight of an entire house. Needless to say, it was neither easy nor inexpensive to ship individual homes. Tract homes could be built much less expensively and were.

Then there were the financial issues. Lustron executives had relied on substantial government assistance to get the business going, securing a $37 million loan from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a Depression-era federal entity that made loans to banks, railroads and other businesses. Delays in getting the business up and running, however, meant that the company had missed the peak of the housing crisis. After 20 months of production, Lustron was still losing money on every house it produced, leaving it unable to repay its loan. The RFC foreclosed, and Lustron declared bankruptcy, leaving 8000 contracts unfulfilled.

Still, with luck and love, some of the homes the Lustron Corporation did manage to build are still standing today. One has even been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art. Harold Hess lived in the Closter house for half a century, satisfied with his purchase but for the occasional need to find handymen with the creativity to repair things in a metal house.  

Look both ways before you cross: Newark's groundbreaking school safety patrols

Back a few years ago, our visit to Newark's Military Park revealed that America's first school safety patrol was established in New Jersey's largest city in May 1916. According to a commemorative plaque placed by the Schoolmen's Club, Newark Schools Attendance Supervisor Charles MacCall and Officer Felix Dunn of the city's police department recommended that the board of education start the patrol to make sure that children learned to cross the street safely on their way to and from school.

What sounds like a pretty obvious concept now -- why wouldn't a kid know to wait to cross the street until cars passed or came to a stop for them -- wasn't at the time. Automobiles were a fairly recent phenomenon, and as traffic increased, the simple act of crossing the street became fraught with potential injury. Guard stationed at intersections and crosswalks would make sure kids passed safely while drumming the "look both ways, then cross" mantra into their brains. The Newark program brought it one step further by enlisting students as guards, perhaps thinking that kids would be more likely to listen to their peers.

In researching the program, I found that the school safety patrol concept, like many good ideas, has been claimed by many parents. It took a while for me to find a non-Schoolmen's reference that placed citing the birth of Newark's program before others. Some branches of the American Automobile Association claim that AAA originated the idea in 1920, while cities like St. Paul, Minnesota proudly state that their safety programs took root in the early 1920s.

To be fair, AAA once recognized that safety patrols seem to have sprung up in many areas at around the same time. A 1940 New York Times article said that the organization was attempting "to find and to honor the far-sighted leaders who pioneered the movement." By then, 300,000 children had donned the familiar safety patrol belts to help to keep their peers safe from oncoming traffic.

Even the originators of the Newark movement seem to be in question. A 1949 obituary states that Eugene Sheridan, not MacCall, was the public schools attendance bureau director who came up with the idea and worked with Dunn to implement it. I haven't been able to clear up the discrepancy, but I discovered that Sheridan was lauded by the AAA as one of several pioneers at a massive safety patrol parade in Washington, DC in 1941. By the time he retired, almost 3400 Newark youngsters were serving as guards, and no fatal accidents had occurred at any of the patrolled intersections or crosswalks since the start of the program.

Dunn headed the Newark School Safety Patrol from its formation in 1917 until his retirement in 1930, and while he did so much to ensure childrens' safety on the road, his family was touched by a car accident. In 1933, he was driving with his wife from Fort Lauderdale to Newark when a tire on their car blew out and the car overturned. Mrs. Dunn died from her resulting injuries, while Mr. Dunn suffered only minor injuries.

The Blakeslee Monument: the traffic stopping memorial to the Father of Good Roads

We've talked many times before about having to stop on the side of a highway to get a good look at a historic marker. The process usually involves a two-second debate over the need to stop ("Wanna check it out?" "Yes."), possibly a five minute look for a decent place to do a U-turn, then a backtrack and maybe even a dash across the road to check it out.

It's something to see, but safely! The Blakeslee Monument, in all its
highway-island glory. Photo by Bill Coughlin, January 10, 2012,
courtesy HMdb.org.

This one takes the process to an extreme: it's challenging to get to, standing, as it does, on a triangular traffic island bordered by U.S. 1&9, Broadway and Wallis Avenue in Jersey City. Try making a U-turn there! Anyway, I've known about it for a while (I could swear I read about the marker in one of Robert Sullivan's books, either The Meadowlands or Cross Country, but I can't seem to find it in either one), but just haven't had the opportunity to get a photo of it (thanks, HMdb.org, for the assist).

The really cool aspect of this monument on a traffic island is what it celebrates: a roads advocate. At the same time, a guy who dedicated his life to reducing the hassles of driving, becomes, himself an impediment to those road enthusiasts who want to honor him with a visit.

Ironies aside, the Blakeslee Monument celebrates the contributions of one George E. Blakeslee, who is said, by some, to be the father of good roads or the pioneer of the modern highway. The tangles of macadam and concrete we rely on today had to come from somewhere, and people like Blakeslee had the foresight to realize that without sound pavement and logical routes, motorists and commerce would, well, go nowhere.

As we learned from our look into the confusing history of our numbered state roads, New Jersey's first concerted effort to standardize the highway system came in 1916 with the passage of the Egan Good Roads Bill. Through it, the state established funding for 13 numbered highways linking our major cities. Travelers accustomed to roads designed for horse-drawn traffic would now enjoy the benefits of more durable thoroughfares engineered for more punishing motor vehicle traffic.

Photo by Bill Coughlin, January 10, 2012,
courtesy HMdb.org.  

George Blakeslee was the driving force behind that bill, which called for a $7 million bond issue to pay for paving roads with "granite, asphalt or wood blocks, brick, concrete, bituminous concrete, asphalt or other pavement having a hard surface and durable character." (Macadam, while cheaper to install than concrete or brick, was more expensive to maintain over the long run.) Not a legislator himself, he instead went with the time-honored tradition of paying a lawyer to write the legislation and finding a lawmaker to introduce it. In this case, the lawmaker was Senator Charles Egan of Hudson County.

Blakeslee's motivations weren't completely altruistic: he had his own parochial interest in improving the state's road system. Having first sold bicycles in the 1890s, he later opened a Cadillac showroom on Kennedy Boulevard in Jersey City and owned a network of gasoline stations in Hudson County. He'd clearly benefit from an improvement to the unreliable patchwork of existing roads, but, as he said himself, the wide variability of road conditions spoke for itself.

The Good Roads bill was passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor James Fairman Fielder, yet required approval through a public question on the November 1916 ballot. Despite the concerns of the State Chamber of Commerce, which questioned whether motor vehicle fees and fines would sufficiently cover the expense of the bond issue, voters approved the bill, and the state highway commission was formed a year later.

When a vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River was first proposed a few years later, Blakeslee advocated for a viaduct connecting what was then the Lincoln Highway to what became the Holland Tunnel. Not surprisingly, it appears to be just about where the Blakeslee Monument stands today. Originally dedicated in 1931, the marker memorializes the naming of Route 1 as the Blakeslee Route in honor of his dedication to the improvement of the state's and nation's roads. The Father of Good Roads didn't live long enough to see it, though: he died of pneumonia in 1919, having taken ill when returning to Jersey City from Detroit via train.

Would Peter Stuyvesant live here? Discovering Teaneck's Warner District

Take a drive around Bergen County, and you're likely to pass a few Dutch Colonial houses that predate the founding of the United States. Built of sturdy stone, many are still occupied as private homes, maybe even surrounded by a development of houses of more recent vintage.

That said, we were kind of surprised to see a small enclave of them on busy Cedar Lane in Teaneck, near the corner of River Road. Had they been moved there in some sort of preservation effort like East Jersey Olde Towne in Piscataway or maybe as a real estate scheme like Wychwood in Westfield?

Actually, no. Despite their aged appearances, the structures are less than 100 years old. And when you study the development a little more closely, you start noticing similarities in construction, reminiscent of 20th century tract housing.

We'd stumbled on the Fred T. Warner Historic District, an early 20th century attempt to recreate the charm of Teaneck's rural Colonial past while meeting the community's evolving housing and commercial real estate needs. Between 1926 and 1938, architect and Teaneck resident Warner constructed a miniature village of homes, garden apartments and even office space for a rapidly growing town. It might not have been as expansive or ideologically-driven as Radburn, but it was unique in its own way.

The Cedar Lane boundary of the 40 building development includes several Dutch Colonial structures, including an office building that the casual observer might think was converted from a large old house. Garden apartments are nestled off the main road, arranged to create a cozy courtyard. Houses in a variety of sizes, some wood or brick, line narrow, winding side streets to create what looked like a storybook setting in the snow.

Like Radburn, the Warner district addresses several housing needs with apartments, small rental houses, duplexes and dwellings for larger families. Proximity to New York was quickly transforming Teaneck to a commuting town, and this mix of housing options provided a necessary stepping stone to support growing population density while retaining the town's intrinsic charm.

Warner bought the land from the estate of William Phelps, which generously agreed to a repurchase and rent-back arrangement when the onset of the Great Depression threatened the project's completion. And as it turns out, his choice of building materials was based on thrift as much as on a dedication to authenticity. He'd bought more than $35,000 worth of stone ahead of another venture he'd been commissioned for, and when that project failed to materialize, he found himself with tons of construction material crying for a use.

Absent the blue historic marker or local knowledge, the average passer-by would have a hard time differentiating the Warner District from its much older, more storied stone brethren, and perhaps that's a good thing. In a time when McMansions and cookie-cutter construction seem the norm, it's nice to run into more authentic-looking replicas of our past. Even if some of them might be a little cookie-cutter themselves.

Drawing the line in Rockleigh

I love a good border dispute, and New Jersey has had its share. The most recent reached the U.S. Supreme Court, when New Jersey won bragging rights to a portion of Ellis Island in 1998. A hundred and thirty years earlier, the state of New York basically appropriated a tract of oyster bed on our side of Raritan Bay and gave it to the federal government for the construction of Great Beds Lighthouse.

Then there's Rockleigh, the tiny Bergen County village. It's so close to the border that some might think it's actually in New York, and for a time many years ago, it was.

Where the Ellis Island and Great Beds issues might be perceived by Jerseyphiles as yet another example of our larger neighbor throwing its weight around, the Rockleigh story is based in bad mapping. We're talking about the 1600s here, an age where surveying equipment left a lot to be desired.

When the Duke of York issued the charter for New Jersey in 1664, he was working with bad information. He declared the boundary with New York to start at latitude 41 degrees, 40 feet to the west and conclude where a southern branch of the Delaware River fed into the Hudson River. You can see the problem: nowhere do the two rivers meet.

Though settlers faced a degree of uncertainty when they applied for land patents, they came, nonetheless. London physician George Lockhart seems to have taken the safe route in his approach to owning land in the area. Having received a patent of 3800 acres from the East Jersey Proprietors in 1685, he sought further confirmation of his ownership from the Province of New York when that government claimed the tract within its jurisdiction. The guy really covered his bases, even though he never settled the land, himself.

It wasn't until 1769 that the current boundary line was settled by royal commission, frustrating both colonies. New York had wanted the land as far south as Closter, and New Jersey had claimed additional land up to Haverstraw in Rockland County.

Either way, Rockleigh's status was settled: it was in New Jersey to stay, first as part of now-dissolved Harrington Township and eventually as part of Northvale. As was once the fashion among certain communities in the state, residents seceded in 1923 over a dispute with the larger township (this one over water lines) and formed their own borough.

The community proudly preserves its historical district, which includes several 18th and 19th century homes, many of Dutch architecture. In all, Rockleigh's population is just over 500, living in fewer than 70 homes, each standing on at least two acres of land. It seems that the town has remained true to the description it provided to the National Register of Historic Places: "represent[ing] a way of life which appears to have disappeared from the New Jersey culture: an area settled by a small number of families, enlarged by family intermarriages and an occasional local settlers and stabilized by the mid-19th century."

Meeting the Lindbergh of Mexico... in Tabernacle

Even as we uncover obscure places, people and facts around New Jersey, I keep a short list of more widely-known destinations in the back of my head for further exploration if we happen to be in the area. I've seen a good number of the old reliables that the guidebooks and other media have featured, but there are a few I haven't gotten to for one reason or another.

The Carranza Memorial is one of them. Deep in the Pinelands, it marks the spot where Mexican Air Force Captain Emilio Carranza's plane crashed on July 12, 1928. Dubbed the Charles Lindbergh of Mexico, the aviator was concluding a goodwill tour in the United States with an attempt to fly from Long Island to Mexico City. If successful, he would have achieved the second longest non-stop airplane flight to date, after Lindbergh's own New York to Paris achievement the year before. Unfortunately, it was not to be. The dashing young pioneer ran into a thunderstorm over southern New Jersey, and his plane plummeted to the ground in dense woods outside Tabernacle.

Carranza may have crashed in an obscure area, but he was not to be forgotten. A few years later, the crash location was marked by a monument erected by the Mexican government and funded by contributions from the country's school children. Constructed of brick stones mined from every state in Mexico, the moderately-sized obelisk is marked with an Aztec eagle and an arrow to represent the flight, plus inscriptions in Spanish and English.

Sounds pretty cool, right? And with a bird on the monument, it's right up Ivan's alley, so why the delay for us? Fact is, we hadn't made it to the general Carranza-politan area because the Pinelands is seldom birded. Yeah, it's an enormous, reasonably pristine stretch of forest, punctuated only occasionally by a town or a county road, but the habitat is much less varied than what you find in other wooded parts of the state. Just about everywhere you look, you see sandy soil and slim conifers, maybe with an oak thrown in for good measure. I could go into a dissertation as to why this is, but the short answer has to do with the porousness of the soil and, to some extent, the burn cycles that favor the existing flora. Bottom line, less variety leads to fewer species of birds. And, of course, birders go where they'll find many species or a sought-after specialty.

In any case, it's been on my 'go to' list for years, and I knew it was accessible because Mexican consular officials and the local American Legion hold a ceremony there every year. "How?" was the question. Every time I noticed the memorial on a map, deep within Wharton State Forest, no decent roads seemed to lead to it. Certainly there had to be a path or trail, but I'd seen enough sand roads off thoroughfares in the larger Pinelands to think twice about taking them. Getting stranded miles from help didn't sound like much fun.

Our recent Brig jaunt brought us near the Pinelands, so I suggested we might make a lengthy detour and attempt to find Carranza. After all, we still hadn't seen our desired cone seed-eating crossbills and evening grosbeaks, we'd be surrounded by conifers, and ... eh, who was I kidding? We were going to scour vast acres of pine trees on the futile search for birds? Let's just dive in and go. We plotted a general route on county roads from the refuge and were on our way.

Thing was, we were basically aiming to get to our desired location from Wharton's southern boundary, when the best route was probably from the north. If I was reading Ivan's ancient New Jersey map properly, we were bound to run into some sandy two-track roads once we were in the forest proper, but they appeared to be unmarked and confusing. Maybe it made some sense to stop and grab a map at Batsto Village, on the southern edge of the forest. Finding that was easy, given all of the directional signs on the road.

Now, the historic community of Batsto deserves an entry all to itself, and we'll definitely get there again for a closer look, but it was too late in the day us to do it justice on this trip. The information desk folks were very friendly and advised us to head north on a county road lining the eastern edge of Wharton, then make a left onto Speedwell-Friendship Road, which would bring us to Carranza Road and the memorial, directly across from the Batona camp. The paved road would turn to gravel, but at least we'd avoid the rutted sand/dirt roads.

We zoomed east and then north on the prescribed county roads, past cranberry bogs I recognized from my past visit to Chatsworth (you mean I'd been that close and didn't realize it???). Now fully harvested, the bogs were dry, the plants a dark red color that made them look berry stained. We went on a bit longer until we arrived at our left turn, Speedwell-Friendship Road.

Now we were truly in the Pines. Thin, scraggled trees lined both sides of the road, many so close together it appeared impossible to hike between them. "A deer could never get a rack through there," I observed as Ivan directed the car down the straight road. About three miles in, the road track turned to gravel -- not as secure as macadam but definitely preferable to sand. Overall, the surface quality was decent, with few potholes or other potential perils. Still, I'd avoid driving it at night; the desolation and lack of streetlights would create quite a challenge, particularly for those who fear old JD.

We made the right turn onto Carranza Road, hoping our destination wasn't that much further ahead. Cars and SUVs became visible through the trees on the side of the road, which meant we'd either reached the Batona camp, the memorial was a lot less hidden away than I'd thought, or we'd totally messed up and were headed into a more populated area we hadn't known about. Then....

There it was! Located in a large clearing, the obelisk is bordered by several hardy plants that reminded me somewhat of agave or aloe vera. The park was bigger than I thought it would be; somehow I'd imagined the memorial was just planted among the pines. Visitors can learn Carranza's story from a bilingual wayside marker, and two holes in the ground appear to be there to receive American and Mexican flags for the annual ceremony.

We were starting to lose sunlight, and we wanted to stop in Chatsworth, so we were on our way after paying our respects to Carranza. As luck would have it, the road turned from gravel to macadam maybe a mile or less north of the memorial. Keep it in mind if you want to make a visit there: the trip is quicker and smoother going south from Tabernacle, but if you want more of a Pinelands experience, come in from the south.

As I've been thinking about Carranza, I'm struck by a couple of things related to the popular comparison of him to Lindbergh. It's interesting to think that just a few years after Carranza's plane, reportedly an exact replica of The Spirit of St. Louis, crashed in the wilderness of the Pinelands, Lindbergh moved his family to a remote location in New Jersey's Sourlands, looking for a respite from unrelenting public attention. Lindbergh was forced to leave the country to find peace after the kidnap of his first child. Carranza is a footnote in world aviation history but is remembered by family, country and a small but dedicated group of New Jerseyans who return to his death site every year. Lindbergh's Sourlands estate is maybe a little less remote, but still obscure and hard to find unless you've found a local who can tell you where it is. That's a Hidden New Jersey jaunt for another time.