A home for sale in northern Indiana is offering a retro look at midcentury modern home construction and furniture, and at the same time, it provides a glimpse at the history of companies now supplying plastics for construction.
Our sister paper Crain's Chicago Business tells the story of a house for sale in Michigan City, Ind., that was once a model home for Alside, the Akron, Ohio, company that now sells composite siding. Back in 1964, Alside Homes Corp. created homes using colorful aluminum panels and modules that could be put together in just a couple of days.
The original owners, Robert Frost and his wife, Amelia, spotted it and loved the model so much they bought it as is, CCB writes. They then left almost everything as it was, including molded plastic furniture from Knoll, which now is best known as an office furniture maker.
When the Frost family finally sold it in 2016 to Karen Valentine and her husband, Bob Coscarelli, they picked a couple who loved the style and kept everything in place with a couple of exceptions. Valentine and Coscarelli had to replace a stovetop, although the rest of the appliances remain in place, and they added luxury vinyl tile for flooring.
When the couple built a pool at an attached lot, they had to install safety fencing but didn't want to lose the style of the house, so instead they created a fence of polycarbonate panels to retain the midcentury modern look.
The Frost house is now going on the market for $750,000. Even if you're not in the market — and can't see the story in CCB — the owners have a wealth of photos on a website dedicated to the Frost house and the entire Alside module home history.
