A few weekends ago we went to NW Indiana to a Historic Landmarks event centering around a number of houses involved in the ’33-’34 Chicago Worlds Fair. The event was aptly dubbed the Century of Progress, and took place in Beverly Shores, Indiana.
The tour consisted of 6 houses, which I’ll list here with any interesting parts about it.
- House of Tomorrow – A three story octagonal home with glass walls on the top two floors. This vision of the future included an airplane hangar.
- Rostone House – A home that uses a man made stone substitute instead of limestone.
- Florida Tropical House – A very cool pink stucco home with a killer deck as a roof.
- Armco-Ferro House – Composed of steel framing and porcelain encased steel panels.
- Log Cabin – A cypress log cabin that isn’t progressive (IMO) and the most boring of the bunch. It’s wood.
- Lustron (3 BR model) – Not part of the World’s Fair, it was a bonus tour for Landmarks of a pristine late 40’s prefab home composed of porcelain encased steel. Very cool and I’ve always wanted an up-close look at one.
With the exception of the Lustron, every home was part of the World’s Fair and is in some stage of a complete restoration. When I say complete restoration, I mean complete. Take the Armco-Ferro home – all the steel panels have been removed and are being completely re-created panel by panel.
Cool little things I learned… A number of the homes were transported to Beverly Shores from Chicago via barge. These homes were only constructed with the thought of being used for a year. They are now owned by the National Parks Service and seen over by the Indiana Historic Landmarks Foundation.
The whole thing gave me a lot of things to appreciate and think about. But now that I’ve had a few days to think about things, I’m struck mostly by the fact that these examples represent what I feel have been important attempts to modernize residential architecture.
The reality is that the vast majority of residential architecture only has improved because of basic material improvements (insulation, drywall, etc) – not necessarily a revolutionary re-thinking of how we live and how homes are constructed. We mostly still live in wood framed homes with mostly the same components here and there. I’m well aware of the modern and progressive options out there right now, but developers and communities don’t care about such things in the face of the cheapness and comfort of our old ways. That’s what would make a difference in actually progressing residential architecture. Lustron came closer than most, but it didn’t happen.
We took camera’s, but I don’t feel that compelled to post any. It’s a combination of not being happy with what I took and the fact that the exteriors were in a massive state of rehab (some unrecognizable). Also, we weren’t allowed to take interior photography despite the homes not being down to the studs (the no interior photography policy of architecture tours really annoys the hell out of me). There images from other sources that you can find if you’re really interested in this…
If you are interested in any of these things, here are some links