The House of Steel was erected in November, 1933, for Winslow Ames, the founding director of New London's Lyman Allyn Art Museum, and his wife, Anna. The Ameses would use it and its "sister" prefab–the building now known as the Winslow Ames House–as rental housing until selling both buildings to Connecticut College in 1949.

The product of one of America’s first comprehensive industrialized housing systems–not to mention one of New England’s first modern houses–the House of Steel is an early example of the work of the pioneering Chicago company General Houses, Inc. GH received nationwide publicity for its system in the early 1930s and was a leader in the prefabricated housing industry for more than a decade, though it erected only a relatively small number of all-steel houses.

The House of Steel is quite similar in plan, materials, and construction to the model homes exhibited by General Houses at the "Century of Progress" Expositions of 1933 and 1934–the World’s Fairs that introduced millions of Americans to prefabrication and modern architecture. With its smooth, unadorned exterior surfaces, its flat roof, rooftop terrace, and open floor plan, the house’s design adhered closely to the functionalist principles of European modernism. Yet this compact and efficient "machine for living"–a prototype for buildings meant to be mass-produced "like Fords"–also reflected the faith in technology and industry that characterized America’s Machine Age.