Historic Edison concept houses >

Single-Pour Concrete Houses.

Location: Gary, Indiana

Scope: Architecture, Preservation, Concrete

Inventor: Thomas Alva Edison

Architect: D. F. Creighton

Period of Significance: 1910 - 1960

Style: Bungalow/Craftsman; Late 19th & Early 20th Century American Movement

Built by: United States Sheet & Tin Plate Co.

The Edison Concept Houses represents a novel concept for house construction designed, patented, and promoted by inventor Thomas A. Edison and refined by other architects and inventors. The structure was regarded as the country's first experiment of this type of large-scale housing production. Constructed for the U.S. Sheet and Tin Plate Company employees, they are also representative of one solution to the City's housing shortage caused by the influx of workers to the new mills.

The row houses and detached terrace houses are outstanding examples of early twentieth-century company-supplied worker housing that utilized experimental methods and materials of house construction. The houses were designed by architect D. F. Creighton of Ambridge, Pennsylvania. They exhibit simple, efficient, and homey spaces. The exterior use of building heights, organization, and grouping of houses and cast details shows the architect's understanding of the need for variation to lessen the monotony of mass production. City directories indicate the mill continued to rent the houses into the early 1970s. Some units continued to be rented for several years to the widows of mill workers.

The houses are the first large-scale attempt of employing Thomas Edison's concept of providing affordable and sanitary housing for the working classes. In 1906, Edison patented metal forms and a process for casting a house in a single pour. While Edison never successfully employed his invention, others assumed and developed the concept, including the Reichert Manufacturing Company (that patented the forms used in Gary). The method described in 1920 is "small, light-weight unit steel forms." Their advantage over other concrete forming systems (for instance, wood or hydraulic forms) was the ability to be assembled with unskilled labor in repeated applications. The forms were invented and patented in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by August Reichert in 1911 and sold under Reichert Adjustable Metal Forms. It was further refined about 1919 and renamed Metaforms.

Almost 100 years later, the nonprofit Partners in Preservation (PIP) commissioned a multiple property documentation submission to the National Register of Historic Places for Gary’s Edison Concept Houses and then followed it up with historic district nominations for four clusters — Polk Street Cottages, Jackson Terraces, Monroe Terrace, and Van Buren Terrace — all researched and written for PIP by Christopher Baas.  “It turned out that because of the setup and machinery costs, the Edison system wasn’t the most economical approach to housing creation,” says Jim Morrow, the creator, and benefactor of PIP.

No longer the property of U. S. Steel, the Edison houses vary widely in condition, with some occupied in good condition and others, owned by the cash-strapped city, vacant and ruinous. PIP funded the National Register nominations to bring attention to these rare houses with an important pedigree, and to make sure they qualify for restoration incentives.

Source: Indiana Landmarks and National Register of Historic Places Nomination Applications

“at the time...Gary, Indiana with its 110 houses, was the largest cement city ever completed.”
— Western Pennsylvania History, FA 2013

American Sheet and Tin Mill Apartment Building | 633 West 4th Avenue

Architect: D.F. Creighton | Built: 1910

This structure is the first of the six apartment buildings constructed in 1910 and the only remaining one today in Gary. Built entirely of formed concrete with minor alterations, nomination documents submitted to The National Register of Historic Places propose that this apartment building is "arguably the most significant of the remaining concrete resources."

Polk Street Concrete Cottage Historic District | 608 Polk Street

Architect: D.F. Creighton | Construction Began: 1910

This detached cottage house is one of two standing structures constructed entirely of concrete in Gary. Subsequent terraces and houses have formed concrete shells but wood frame interiors.