Global Celotex

By 1928, the New Orleans-founded Celotex Company had expanded its international operations to include much of the European continent. As a sugar cane industry, Celotex boasted a $12 million production out of New Orleans.(1) The bagasse building material shipped directly from its Mississippi River plant to these foreign markets.

Dependence on European exports began to detrimentally  impact the company in 1938, when apprehensions regarding political stability caused stock market fluctuations. Celotex posted quarterly losses and began to reconfigure its business for domestic and wartime production.


(1)"Sugar Cane Industries." The Times-Picayune 4 February 1931.

Image above:  From Verwendung von Celotex in Gebäuden. Chicago: The Celotex Company, 1928. This copy bears the stamp of the Hungarian Celotex representative, Magyar Celotex-Árusito Vállalat, which was located in Budapest on Harmincad Street. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Happy Home (1923)

Architect-builder Edwin L. Markel (1888-1956) completed a new residence for his family in 1923 and invited the public to visit his "Happy Home." Located at 4416 South Galvez Street, the house featured Celotex insulating lumber as an interior plaster base and as a sheathing under the exterior stucco and brick. Markel selected Celotex after visiting J.W. Thompson's Building Material exhibit (shown below) in the Weis Building (830 Common Street).

In November 1922, realtor Meyer Eiseman announced that Louisiana would soon boast the only town in the world to be built of bagasse. Located on the former Ames Farms tract, the celotex houses were intended to lodge plant workers after the company invested $1,000,000 in the West Bank riverfront property.(1)

The Celotex Corporation recognized the model home as an effective marketing device. It hired New York architects Henry Otis Chapman, Jr. (1898-1967) and Harold W. Beder (1876-1967) to design its demonstration house (shown below) for the 1939 New York World's Fair's "Town of Tomorrow".

Claiming Celotex products to be completely termite- and dry rot-resistant, the company published brochures and souvenir books for fair-goers. Savings and Loan Day was held on September 30, and the Celotex House hosted hundreds of association delegates who came to view the structure and its grounds.

After the Second World War, Celotex heavily promoted its ominous-sounding product, "Cemesto."(2) Precision-Cut Homes was a local builder that established a fireproof concrete block industrial plant mobilized for Cemesto prefabricated construction. It launched its model homes first in Jefferson Parish, at Cross and Second Streets.(3) The company could supply homes to qualified veterans for a mere $5,500 and offered dealer franchises to those located within a 300-mile radius. Precision-Cut was a short-lived venture: its 2500 Calliope Street plant was advertised for sale in August 1947.


(1)"Builders to Use Cane Pulp Board." The Times-Picayune 7 November 1922. Cambridge landscape architect John Nolen planned the Celotex "Farm City" of Clewiston, Florida for the company (1923-24).

(2)Celotex had launched Cemesto-Board in 1931.For more on Cemesto, see Jack Breihan, "Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company." DOCOMOMO_US Newsletter (Summer 2008): p. 7. URL: http://www.docomomo-us.org/files/DOCONewsSummer08.pdf

(3)"New Plant for Pre-Fab Houses." The Times-Picayune 19 May 1946.

Images above:  Top:  "Celotex Insulating Lumber." Advertisement. The Times-Picayune 4 February 1923.

Center and Bottom:  The Celotex Corporation. "Thanks for Dropping in to see the Celotex House." Brochure. Chicago: The Company, 1930. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

From Louisiana to Minnesota

This blog has previously addressed the use of sugar cane bagasse fiberboard, celotex, as a building material. The Southeastern Architectural Archive houses a growing collection of materials associated with the Celotex Company, which had its plant in Marrero on the Ames Farm tract (top image above).

Celotex was one of the first industries to establish a factory at Ames Farm, investing a million dollars in its operations and employing 500 people. The "Ames zone" included the former Estelle and Southside Plantations and was developed by New Orleans real estate entrepreneur Meyer Eiseman during World War I. Its earliest output was devoted to victory gardens.(1)

New Orleans architect Martin Shepard (1875-1962) drafted the first specifications for the use of celotex in construction: as exterior sheathing, as a base for plaster, as insulation, as an interior finish and for acoustical purposes. Chicago engineers such as Robert W. Hunt & Co. and G.F. Gebhardt conducted extensive tests on the new material.(2)

By 1920, celotex was used to finish St. Paul, Minnesota architect H.A. Sullwold's office in the Endicott Building (lower image above) and at Chicago's Navy Pier for "acoustical correction."(2) Sullwold was especially concerned with escalating lumber prices after World War I, and that could have prompted his early adoption of celotex.(3)

Want to know more about Celotex?   Search Tulane Libraries for "Celotex."

(1) "Seeks to Attract Big Industries to Ames Tract." The Times-Picayune 2 April 1922.

(2) Martin Shepard. Celotex Insulating Lumber: Specifications. Chicago: The CeloteX Company, n.d. Architectural Trade Catalogs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

(3) F.W. Armstrong. "Lumber High? We'll Say So." Western Architect & Engineer LXI:1 (April 1920), p. 93.

Top two images above from Martin Shepard. Celotex Insulating Lumber: Specifications. Chicago: The CeloteX Company, n.d. Architectural Trade Catalogs Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lower two images from Meyer Eiseman, Realtor. Ames Deep-Water Industrial Sites: The Industrial Center of New Orleans, recto and verso of undated advertisement. Martin Shepard Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Lazy Susan Tanning Beds

Portable, revolving tanning beds constructed of sugar cane bagasse? Indeed, there were such things . . . invented by a snowbird newspaperman who became a sun-cure proponent.

"Sun-bathing de luxe in the privacy of your own little solarium is the latest fad among the winter residents of St. Petersburg, Florida, the winter resort famous the world over for its sunshine.

Obtaining a coat of tan on the beaches is no longer sufficient for those who believe in the health-giving qualities of the sun's rays.  It remained for A.D. Brewer, former Indiana and Vermont newspaperman, to devise a method of taking an 'all-over' sun bath, hardly possible even in the skimpiest of modern bathing suits.

Mr. Brewer, having been cured of a serious ailment through the application of ultra-violet sun rays, some years ago became a sun-bath enthusiast and perfected the solaria now being used in St. Petersburg.

The tiny individual houses which compose the solaria are constructed entirely of Celotex -- excepting the floors -- with adjustable roofs and windows of Celloglass, a glass which admits ultra-violet rays that do not penetrate ordinary window glass.

Mounted on a sort of pivotal arrangement, the little houses revolve with a slight pressure of the hand on a corner, thus assuring the occupant the full rays of the sun at all times.

All openings are screened to exclude annoying insects, and small windows, placed low down on the sides, admit cross-currents of air. The inside of the houses are painted white with the finishing strips in green.  A spotless white cot and stool, a mirror and a rug are the furnishings.

The units are portable and are shipped to all parts of the United States."

As reported in "Sun Bath Houses of Celotex New Fad in Florida."  The Celotex News 3:10 (April 1930):  pp. 1, 4.