Metal frame homes earn niche in building market.(Trends in Residential Real Estate)

In the years after World War II, there was an immense market for housing in America. The combined effects of the Great Depression and four years of war had slowed home construction and now 10 million returning veterans were back looking for cars, wives and a place to put them.

Among others, a new corporation in Columbus tried to meet this growing demand with a house made mostly of prefabricated metal.

Lustron houses captured the national imagination for a time and some of them can still be found in older neighborhoods. But the cheap availability of lumber and the skilled workers used to using it finally triumphed over the metal homes. Lustron faded away and wood framed homes became the norm in American home construction.

Until recently.

In the past few years there has been renewed interest in the use of metal in home construction. Just when the lumber industry thought that the ghosts of Lustron had been expelled forever from America's imagination, the spectre of metal homes rising in America's heartland is with us once again. …