What is Lortondale?
In the early 1950s, Tulsas largest volume home builder was a man named Howard C. Grubb. Howard Grubb was a merchant builder, as tract house developers were known at the time, and built mostly starter homes for first-time home buyers. Typically, merchant builders would buy a 20-40 acre tract of undeveloped land, subdivide it, install utilities, and start building homes for the booming post-war housing market, purely on speculation. The depression years of the 1930s and the war years of the 1940s had taken their toll and there was a huge pent up demand for housing after WWII. The baby boom was in full fling, and builders were selling homes as fast as they could build them.
The typical Howard Grubb home of 1950-1951 was a two bedroom, one bathroom, single attached garage house built on a crawl space foundation, about 950 square feet, and selling for approximately $9,000.00. In the early 1950s, Grubb sold about 300 of these houses a year in Tulsa. In 1952, he had a different idea. Modern architecture was becoming more popular in both commercial and residential construction. Homebuilders such as Joseph Eichler in California were having great success with their modern home designs. Howard Grubb teamed up with a local Tulsa architect named Donald H. Honn to develop more modern homes, in the mid-priced range. He wanted to offer homebuyers of the time something on the cutting edge of architecture, with amenities not usually found in mid-priced homes. Grubb and Honn developed several designs during 1952-1953, rejected many, and finally came up with their plans for the Lortondale housing addition in Tulsa, OK.
It was very important to Howard Grubb that he offer the latest in home design with perceived extra value for the money. In mid 1953, Grubb and Honn constructed 3-4 prototype homes for Lortondale, constructed at 21st Place and Pittsburgh Avenue in Tulsa. They used these houses to test public opinion, make design changes as they thought necessary, and gauge sales demand. In early 1954, their marketing studies were complete and they forged ahead with construction of the Lortondale housing addition at 26th and Yale Avenue in Tulsa, OK. The original plans for Lortondale were for approximately 540 homes, built on four 40-acre tracts between 26th Street and 31st Street, Yale and Hudson Avenues in Tulsa. Original selling prices for Lortondale were from $13,500.00 to $16,500.00, depending upon the model and options selected. Donald Honns Lortondale plans allowed for great flexibility, 3 bedrooms, 1, 1 , or 2 full bathrooms, 1 or 2 car attached garages, bonus living areas or 4th bedrooms. Among the many new innovations of Lortondale homes:
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Every Lortondale home included both central forced-air heating and central waterless, or refrigerated air conditioning. Lortondale was the very first merchant builder development in the United States to feature all waterless air conditioned homes. Grubb formed an agreement with the Chrysler Airtemp company (a division of Chrysler Motors, just like Frigidaire Corp. was a division of General Motors) to supply 3-ton central air units for all Lortondale homes. In exchange, Chrysler air conditioning ads in magazines of the time prominently featured Lortondale houses. Air conditioning was a true luxury at the time, usually reserved only for custom built homes, but Grubb was able to offer this luxury in his mid-priced homes.
Each 40 acre Lortondale tract was to be built around a community center/swimming pool. Each Lortondale owner would own a share of the swimming pool in his area. This was also another first for Tulsa. Grubb did build the first swimming pool in the original 40 acre Lortondale tract at 4941 E 26th Street, but future pools were not built. (There is a second pool, the 5300 Swim Club, in Lortondale II, but this was not built by Grubb; it was developed by others.)
The Lortondale architecture was certainly unique, at least for Tulsa. Slab-on-grade construction with HVAC ductwork in the slab, extremely low pitched or flat roofs, and open floor plans were all new for Tulsa and this part of the US in early 1954. All Lortondale homes featured combo living/dining rooms at the rear of the house with expansive floor to ceiling glass walls looking out onto the back yard. Exposed ceiling beams in living and bedrooms (depending upon roof pitch), mahogany paneled walls, modern kitchens with the new (for 1954) Formica laminate countertops in both kitchens and bathrooms were all the latest in modern design at the time. Every Lortondale home also featured a built-in Hotpoint automatic dishwasher, another luxury usually seen in only high priced homes of the era.
Ultimately, only about 220 homes and one swimming pool were constructed according to Howard Grubbs original vision for Lortondale. Why?
We can speculate a lot about this, but several factors come to mind. First, the FHA (Federal Housing Administration.) In the early 1950s, the FHA guaranteed about 25f all residential mortgages, about the same ratio as today. The FHA was notorious for their reluctance to accept new concepts and ideas in homebuilding, and very slow to revise their underwriting standards. The FHA felt that modern (contemporary) home architecture was a fad and not a good long-term investment, so they would not initially guarantee loans on modern homes. This eventually changed, but it planted a seed in the publics mind that modern design homes were not a good investment. In addition, conventional mortgage lenders usually took the easy way out and adopted FHA underwriting standards too, so in effect, what the FHA said was the rule. From its very start in early 1954, Lortondale was the neighborhood of choice for young architects, college professors, engineers, and other professionals who appreciated the esthetics of modern design. But after a point, demand dried up and there wasn't enough local demand to sustain Lortondale construction to the ultimate end.
Americans love to go to work in their ultra-modern, glass walled skyscrapers, but when they come home at night, the preference has historically been for cape cod, salt-box, or more provincial type homes. The 1950s was a time of the space-age, when everyone was looking to the future and all the wonders it may contain. Howard C. Grubb and Donald H. Honn wanted to bring a part of that future vision to the average American of moderate means, and gave us Lortondale.
written by Lortondale resident Steve Edlich