1819 Lyndale Ave
Eau Claire, WI, USA

Einar and Alice Borton House

The Einar and Alice Borton House is located in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.


History

Einar Borton was a bank teller. This house, belonging to him and his wife, is a Lustron house. It was added to the State Register of Historic Places in 2012 and to the National Register of Historic Places the following year.

National Register of Historic Places - Einar and Alice Borton House

Statement of Significance:

The Einar and Alice Borton House was identified by the Eastside Hill and Westside Neighborhoods Intensive Survey in 2010 as being potentially eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) for its local significance under National Register (NR) Criterion C (Architecture). 8 Research to assess the house's potential for eligibility was undertaken using the NR significance area of Architecture, a theme that is also identified in the State of Wisconsin's Cultural Resource Management Plan (CRMP). This research centered on evaluating the house by utilizing the Contemporary section of the Architectural Styles study unit of the CRMP.9 The results of this research are detailed below and demonstrate that the steel-clad Borton house is locally significant under NR Criterion C for being a very fine, highly intact example of a Westchester Deluxe model prefabricated two-bedroom single family dwelling manufactured by the Lustron Corporation.

The Einar and Alice Borton house was built in 1949 and was one of four prefabricated Lustron houses constructed in Eau Claire between 1948 and 1950. Although short-lived, all metal Lustron houses produced by the Lustron Corporation were some of the most successful of the pre-fabricated houses developed just after World War II to meet the enormous post-war need for new housing. They are now the best known and most readily identifiable of these houses. Lustron houses were produced in a huge former airplane factory in Columbus, Ohio, and they were especially notable for being made entirely of steel and for being mass-produced on an assembly line.

In a 1992 article on these houses, Tricia Canaday wrote:
Lustron homes are distinctive in their appearance, with two-foot-square, porcelain enameled steel panels on the exterior, usually colored yellow, beige, gray, or aqua. The roof is similarly made of steel, but these panels are sized and shaped to look much like standard shingles. Although several different models were planned, the vast majority-perhaps more than 90%- of those shipped from the factory were the original, two-bedroom Westchester model measuring 31 feet by 35 feet. This model has four picture windows, one in the dining room, one in each bedroom, and one in the living room, which is a bay window.
The interior of the Lustron is all porcelain-enameled steel as well, but these panels are 2 feet wide by 8 feet high and beveled, much like standard paneling, to give the appearance of a conventional home. The design features an open floor plan with only the bedrooms and the bathroom having doors. The space is very efficiently planned, with plenty of storage, making the 1024 square feet seem like more. Built in shelf, drawer and mirror areas are in the dining room, living room and master bedroom. The closets all have shelves in them as well.

Although a design and practical success, the Lustron House was a manufacturing and commercial failure and only some 2680 were made before the company closed its doors in 1950; approximately 150 were built in Wisconsin. These houses lived up to their claim of being practically maintenance free and termite and rodent-proof and they represented an important step forward in the history of prefabricated housing.