Architect Walter Scholer of Lafayette, Indiana, who designed many buildings on Purdue University's campus, designed the Wieboldt-Rostone House as a Century of Progress Home to showcase Rostone, a new material manufactured by Lafayette-based Rostone, Inc. and billed as never needing repairs. Composed of limestone, shale, and alkali, Rostone was promoted in a variety of colors and forms, including slabs and panels made to exact dimensions, and company founder David Ross contracted to build a house for the Chicago World's Fair in 1933. Rostone and the Indiana Bridge Company completed most of the design and fabrication work at a factory, using steel beams and columns sheathed in precast Rostone panels attached by preset bolts. Weighing 120-130 tons, the Rostone House was the heaviest structure relocated from the Fair site to Beverly Shores, and massive oak beams temporarily supported the concrete slab floors during the move, with many still in the basement. Wieboldt Department Stores of Chicago and Evanston furnished the interiors. Nearby steel mills and refineries, along with lake-effect snows, rains, and quick temperature changes, proved too much for Rostone, and by 1950 environmental and industrial extremes had caused severe deterioration, after which it was covered with Perma-stone. Restored Rostone panels can be seen around the front door, in the interior entrance area, and around the living room fireplace, and the house was restored using original blueprints found in company archives just before their destruction. Lafayette still has a block of Rostone houses with their original exteriors.