Two proper names in Babbitt, both of which the Library of America edition’s editors chose not to gloss (although the note on the Torrens system of registering land titles is quite helpful):
The customer joined him in the worship of machinery, and they came buoyantly up to the tenement and began that examination of plastic slate roof, kalamein doors, and seven-eighths-inch blind-nailed flooring, began those diplomacies of hurt surprise and readiness to be persuaded to do something they had already decided to do, which would some day result in a sale. (ch. VI)
Kalamein was used as a trade name for the sheet metal cladding on doors and windows, applied as a fireproofing measure in the absence of high-quality timber. As John M. Corbett writes,
A century ago, wood windows were first clad in zinc coated or zinc plated steel, with the object of making them fire resistant, and marketed under the trade name “Kalamein”. This name refers to calamine, the mineral which furnishes the ore from which zinc, the eighth metal known to man, is extracted…. While the trade name “Kalamein” seems no longer to be maintained, the terms “kalamein”, “kalamien” and “calamine” persist, referring to the general practice of cladding architectural elements in sheet metal of any composition.
The implication of the passage from the 1920s by Sinclair Lewis is that kalamein, like the plastic slate, offered an inexpensive, relatively safe dwelling. Somewhat paradoxically, Corbett, addressing architectural restoration, says that kalamein doors now are no longer cheap.
It turns out that I’ve already done the research for the second mystery name. Babbitt is stumping around the city’s ethnic neighborhoods for mayoral candidate Lucas Prout:
Crowded in his car, they came driving up to Turnverein Hall, South Zenith…
I found a Turnverein Hall in Sacramento last month.