“Solar Houses: An Architectural Lift in Living”
In 1936, the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company, based in Toledo, Ohio, developed a new
product called “thermopane”. It consisted of two panes of glass, sealed around a thin separating
air space; as such, it provided significantly more insulation than a single sheet of glass. Given the
simultaneous interest in modern architectural strategies that used wide expanses of glass,
thermopane was aggressively marketed by L-O-F towards architects and their clients.
To some extent, this was simply the continuation of an L-O-F marketing campaign for the picture
window, a large window facing into the living room. But the premise of solar heating made it
different – with an all-glass south facing façade, modern houses were seen to be able to take
advantage of solar energy as an “auxiliary heat source;” the insulation provided by thermopane,
however meager when compared to a masonry or insulated wall, helped to establish a logic for
solar heated houses across the Midwest and northeast.
The pamphlet “Solar Houses: An Architectural Lift in Living,” reproduced here, was just one of a
number of promotional initiatives. In another example, L-O-F sent out a sample newspaper with
front-page stories about the demonstration solar house they encouraged newspapers editors to
engage architects and the industry building industry and build in their own small towns. LibbeyOwens-Ford offered to assist the newspaper in finding a builder who would bear the cost of
construction as well as department stores and manufacturers who would contribute furnishings
and appliances, and in securing the participation of “banks, landscape architects, utilities and
other interested factors” who were also presumed to also be advertisers in the paper. Further
opportunities were identified in “popularity contests to find the girl with the ‘sunniest
disposition’ to reign for a day as hostess of the solar house”, and in the prospect of donating the
house – after a brief exhibition period – to “the city’s most deserving veteran and his family.”
( Libbey-Owens-Ford, “The SOLAR HOUSE: A SURE FIRE PROMOTION Made-to-Order for Your
Newspaper,” 1944, in Libbey-Owens-Ford Archives, Ward Canady Center for Rare Books and Special
Collections, University of Toledo.)
L-O-F also worked with Simon and Schuster to publish Your Solar House: A Book of Practical
Homes for all Parts of the Country in 1944, which chose well-known architects to illustrate a
possible solar house, one per state. They also distributed, free of charge, “sun angle calculators”
to interested architects. In this fashion, Libbey-Owens-Ford – who also provided all of the glass
for the well-known Case Study House program from 1944-1963 – was interested not only on
encouraging clients to ask for houses with thermopane, but was strategically focused on the
architect-client relationship as a place where new knowledge about the environment could
develop. “See your architect” the end of the “Architectural Lift” pamphlet suggests, trusting that
the professional, well informed by their devices and brochures, will lead the client to a glassfilled future.
Daniel Barber
See his article “Tomorrow’s House: Solar Housing in 1940s America,” in Technology
and Culture 55:1 (January, 2014).