Their blueprints were based on what was popular at the time and while they werent the first or only company to do mail-order houses, theyre among the most memorable because you could buy damn near anything in their 500+ page catalogs. In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. If my house is not a kit, where did it come from? Other times, the legal description refers to a house being on "a road leading from York to Millville", and maybe the lot bordering "the land of Joseph Craws" usually, that road, if we can figure out which one it is, is miles and miles long, and there's no way to find "the land of Joseph Craws", so that's of no help at all. In late 1930, sales of Searshomes were starting to tank. Call me a cynic, but I often wonder why kit houses were not stolen. the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. Identifying Sears Homes has become a pastime among history enthusiasts because of their sturdy structure, the do-it-yourself nature of construction, and the popular architectural design concepts. We also find street names that have changed (without our knowing that), or, especially for folks who bought their house in 1930-32 (the waning years of the mortgage program), we find that folks lost their homes during the depression, so we can't pin them down using the 1930 or 1940 census records. If your house was built between 1908-1940, theres a chance it might be an original Sears house. within a fe A very special, authenticated Aladdin home just hit the market in Takoma After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. The larger Victorian-style houses that were already there and scant in number were out of reach for working class first-time home buyers. Photo from Realtor site. That's not shown anywhere for this model, so we can't say for sure if these are examples of the No. Square . People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. Keep in mind, however, that even though we have found well over 200 Sears houses in the PA and NJ suburbs of Philadelphia, those are densely populated areas. That year, the Aladdin Company of Bay City, Michigan, offered the first kit homes through mail order. The builder was W.L. Some of the most popular models were:[12], The largest and one of the most expensive Sears models was the Magnolia. Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your Browse the list below to see if there are Modern Homes in your city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. On another block of W 11th Street, there is an example of the Sears Modern Home No. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. Excuse me while I openly weep thinking about how many vacation cottages today probably cost the same or even more than, Sears also offered mortgages to home buyers and was pretty liberal with their lending terms, which made them an attractive option for widows, the self-employed, and people in marginalized groups who otherwise had trouble qualifying for traditional bank loansa problem that still persists today. is selling shipping container homes for about $50,000 a pop and Amazon is also selling prefab tiny houses at a variety of sizes and price points. We cannot be absolutely certain, but the numbers do not support it. Sears, Roebuck and Company's Modern Homes program began in 1908 and ended in 1940. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. Sears also offered mortgages to home buyers and was pretty liberal with their lending terms, which made them an attractive option for widows, the self-employed, and people in marginalized groups who otherwise had trouble qualifying for traditional bank loansa problem that still persists today. Action in the Community Through Service Homeless Shelter. We saw that on numerous Rossville/No. You roughed it until you found a new place and if you wanted a FOREVER home, you stayed put until it was done being built. Please contact me if you would like a free This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. Tasty Soft Garlic and Herb Bread Sticks Recipe How to Make it in 23 Simple Steps, Villa Faberge! Ha! Basic cross-gabled two-story farmhouses are to be found almost everywhere in towns and cities as well as many rural areas throughout the United States. Builders that already have both the funds and the skilled professionals in architecture, construction, and land use make it easier for the average person who only wants to worry about their career, move, and family. Another old model found predominantly in that Lakeview area, was the. The search for Sears Roebuck houses nationwide was launched in the mid-1970's when the, This was a case of unfortunate timing. If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. The Preservation Commission has identified a majority of the styles, but since many are modified it can be hard to tell. Here is a year-by-year list of houses as they were advertised in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. Those kinds of topics are cleared up, in this blog post: When I chatted with Kevin Riordan, I also sent him a list of several nice Sears houses that he could consider photographing for his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Once delivered, many of these houses were assembled by the new homeowner, relatives, friends and neighbors, in a fashion similar to the traditional barn-raisings of farming families. Andrew is responsible for adding hundreds (and hundreds) of Sears houses to our database, especially in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., in numerous counties in Michigan, and a gold mine of houses in Westchester County, New York, especially in Yonkers. It is unknown whether any were purchased or built. In addition to home building costs being up to 40% lower than traditional building, you also had the option to bring your own blueprints to Sears to get them modified for far less than itd comparatively cost to go to a builder or architect today. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. If yours is not one of those, please let us know :) We are confident about all three being Sears houses, but have not been able to authenticate any of them (with mortgage or deed records, blueprints, shipping labels, letters from Sears, or marked lumber). Normajean Moser of McCandless owns a Walton model that was purchased from the Sears Modern Home catalog. In the early years, the models were identified with numbers. Sometimes researchers get lucky and find facts and figures in old company newsletters, personal papers of Sears managers and executives, historical newspapers, and archival interviews conducted with people who worked in the department in the 1930's and 1940's. The NHPD is the only de-duplicated source for comprehensive data on the publicly supported housing property inventory. In many cases, we may be able to tell you of homes in your town, that have actually been authenticated as Sears homes, and, in some cases, we may be able to tell you that the house in question is a kit house from another company (consider, , All photos in these blog posts are the property of the author of this blog- link to this blog. Determining which company manufactured a particular catalog and kit home may require additional research to determine the origin of that home. 1. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). Washington D.C. and its nearby suburbs have an unusually rich cache of kit houses stashed away in some of the leafy, well-tended neighborhoods where 1920s houses still shine. that ranged from simple and rustic to utterly decadent. She said she didnt know the house was built from a kit ordered from a catalog until after she bought it. Our research would not be possible, without online resources for Sears Modern Homes catalogs, and the catalogs for other kit-house companies, such as Gordon-Van Tine, Wardway, Aladdin, Sterling, Lewis, and Bennett. The most popular models appeared in the catalog for multiple years. Lara Solonickne, who writes the blog. Tailor the data to your community to help preserve your local assets or explore national data to better understand the need for affordable housing and the dynamics of the publicly supported housing market. Click here. 3 in U.S. with, at todays count, 1,963 Sears homes found.. Finally, if you really want to understand the basics of what a Sears Modern Homes kit house is, and what it is not, you might find this blog post of mine to be helpful and informative. The article mentioned Sears having sold 50 houses in La Porte, Indiana but, interestingly, Sears had actually provided the funding and the houses, knowing that the area was in need of housing right away, and offered to have the houses paid for on time. If any of you have ever been interested in coming to see me do a kit home Thanks to the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, the NRDB will continue to be updated and available at least through 2023, and in some form, beyond that. More than 100 years of stories, product and brand histories, photographs, catalog images and more are now available online. 1232 / No. This is the case for the southern New Jersey counties that are suburbs of Philadelphia. Had the. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. Sales were down, and there was excess inventory languishing in warehouses. It was just recently sold again earlier this year. BMO, LAFC, and Angel City FC leaders were joined by special guests Earvin "Magic" Johnson and Mia Hamm for the . Thanks for your interest! 2) Look for shipping labels. ", "Bill of Materials for Sears Modern Home", "Two Italian Families and their Neighboring Sears Houses", "New Homes in Cranford for $4,000!Biggest development evolved in Sunny Acres", "Yes, Virginia, Sears Homes Were Built After 1940", "The Top Four Most Popular Sears Homes--Have You Seen These? This label was discovered in a Sears Silverdale model home built in 1911 in Northhampton, Mass., by Judith Chabots grandparents. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. [37] Similiar references are made to boyhood homes of Richard Nixon and Warren Buffett. ), or streets that have houses with no designated house number (yes, again! The nine easy signs follow: 1) Look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic. Prefab homes arent exactly an exotic concept nowadays. I believe my parents were the 3rd owners purchasing the house in 1965 or 1966. small-town America even into the 1940 census). New York state is 4th, with 1,679 houses found. [18] National and regional competitors in the catalog and kit home market included Aladdin, Bennett, Gordon-Van Tine, Harris Brothers, Lewis, Pacific Ready Cut Homes, Sterling and Montgomery Ward (Wardway) Homes. Sears Lewiston: A Sears Model Home in New Jersey Authenticated Sears Lewiston 261 N. Jackson St., North Plainfield, NJ 1929 This great-looking Sears Lewiston was built in 1929, and used as a model home for Sears after it was built by Anthony P. Raffaniello, and his wife, Helena. Betcone spoke of how housing styles were drastically changing and how many customers wanted more efficient, streamlined designs. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. Shipping label image from my mother's family's 1911 Sears No. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count. 175 (in 1913). Here are a few: Andrew just today noticed this brick house with the Sears curlicue decorative iron strapping (only offered by Sears, and the only style of iron strapping ever offered by Sears). 168/Matoka, 301 Weller Avenue, La Porte, Indiana probable Sears Modern Home No. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. One of the early Sears House researchers that our group still relies on for her expertise in the D.C. housing market, is D.C. realtor Catarina Bannier (Bannier & Sandalow). Looks like Yoho probably bought plan #466 from H. L. Wilson, the actual designer. In other cases, the home followed the general design of a Sears house without being an exact duplicate. Excuse me while I openly weep thinking about how many vacation cottages today probably cost the same or even more than house houses in many parts of the country. As its mail-order catalogs were already sent to millions of homes, Sears had a distinct advantage over other kit-home competitors. This is just the top of the blog page you'll find dozens of links to online catalogs here, a link to the excellent Pinterest resource made for us by Sears-house owner Dale Haynes, and a list of hard-copy book resources that are both interesting and informative. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. That is unique to Sears. Also, considering that the article was published in April of 1912, all of these models would have been marketed only with their number, as no word names were given to the models until 1916. While these features werent in every single Sears home, they still set the stage for home builders to realize what people wanted in their new digs because of how much their quality of life was improved. The rest of these models are singletons, from the mid 1920s to early 1930s. When the. If you don't know what that means, look at these two examples, and note where the orange arrow points that little extra strip of roofing that makes a sort of closed triangle. website, which was published from Oct 2013 to Nov 2014. Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). Kushel is credited with suggesting to Richard Sears that the company assemble kits of all the parts needed and sell entire houses through mail order. Cindy's research in Delaware County, coupled with my research in Montgomery County, netted at least 200 hundred authenticated houses, but that research was preceded by many hours of searching the streets of Willow Grove, Glenside, and other suburbs, by Karen, Nigel, Sarah, Marie, and Andrew. Capture from Google Streetview. You can clearly see a major difference on this side of the houses. Many included the latest technology available to house buyers in the early part of the twentieth century, such as central heating, indoor plumbing, telephone, and electricity . Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the Photo from Realtor site. The Sears Argyle was named after Argyle Street in Chicago. The Greenview/No. Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. So, I've added an asterisk next to the addresses of these possible No. The company was forced to liquidate $11 million in defaulted debt. But it was a different story when Sears began selling house building kits in 1908. I think that maybe Google maps Streetview wasn't great quality on many of the streets. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? Looking at the sorry state of Americas rail infrastructure today, this also makes me weep although today theyd just be delivered via truck. Thank you for visiting! Sears is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and its currently estimated that. She said she also didnt know it was a mail-order house when she bought it 14 years ago. This is the Lakeview area where we found most of the examples of the 115, 171, and 159, as well as a number of examples of the No. . House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Originally marketed as the. Additionally, at this point in the Sears Modern Homes program, the homes were sold/packaged only with standard-length wood, so none of the framing lumber would have been pre-cut (and, therefore, there would be no alpha-numeric stamps on the wood pieces in the house). Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. One of the most expensive models was the Magnolia, a 10-room Colonial-style house with. The multi-million-dollar home has been red-tagged while two other Checklist Search provides a simple and fast way to generate a pre-formatted checklist suitable for printing. A Newport Beach home remains dangerously close to tumbling down a cliffside after the ground underneath gave way on Friday morning. This Sears mail-order house named The Crescent was built in Munhall in 1920, according to owner Molly Harbst. Thank you for visiting! When the tiny house movement took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. Compare house designs to original catalog images. The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. Their blueprints were based on what was popular at the time and while they werent the first or only company to do mail-order houses, theyre among the most memorable because you could buy damn near anything in their 500+ page catalogs. Related: Floating Chairs and Texas McMansions | McMansions vs Really Big Houses | Strange Mansion in Carmel, Indiana | What is a Mansion. Andrew Mutch ran across that same article in the American Lumberman, and posted in our group, asking if anyone was interested in looking for some of the old models that might be around. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. Park, MD. [34], Like the Standard Addition in Carlinville, neighborhoods of Sears houses still hold a sense of identity and community. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? We have just over 200 Sears houses on our list, that came from Rebecca's research project in Elgin (it also included kit houses from other companies, that she was able to identify -- we've added those to our lists for those companies, as well). Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the So this blog has been radio silent for a while now! Hi, Lauren! Ruth's Beauty Parlor: A Sears No. Images are available Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. 5 Jun. So, they are likely from Sears. Ive visited New Orleans several times and love the style of the buildings there. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. Philadelphia Inquirer: Sears Homes In the Philly S Where are the Sears Houses - February 2023 Edition, The Strange Case of the Wandering Bungalow, DC House Cat Chiming In - Historic Mail-Order Homes, Same Name, Different House Part 2 - From Aurora to the Elmwood, 1926 Sears Special Supplement from AntiqueHome.org. built in New Jersey could look just like the same one ordered in Texas and built there, but it wasnt designed to look exactly like the other homes on the block. It mightve been easier to get a job or start a business off the bat compared to the hoops and bureaucracy we have for both these days, but there was no U-Haul or Pods to make moving easier. Depending on where you live, the thought of just building a small or medium sized house can sound totally bizarre or perhaps totally doable if youve got miles and miles of wide open space to work with. Buyers could hire a contractor to assemble their home or build it themselves following the detailed instructions that were included. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. I learn all kinds of interesting stuff here; thanks! In this case, the problem was that we couldn't see the left side of these models, just by looking at the catalog and the floor plans. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Thats cheaper than many tiny houses and with space to actually breathe and have more than one person live with you without wanting to kill each other. Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. Instead, shipping labels were affixed to the backside of trim that identified properties. Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. Text information is available through RareFind 5 and provides essential information about special status species and occurrences. The houses, comprising eight models, were all built in a 12-block area known as the Standard Addition. Rockstar, Consistent Trees, and Baryon Mass data from the Generation 3 and Generation 6 VELA Simulations. However, in La Porte, we've also found five examples* of houses that look like a great match for the No. They came in all sizes and price points before buying a ready-made house or building kit of your choosing became relegated to the tiny house movement if you dont have the resources to buy a plot of land and build from there. The bulk order is the largest known order for Sears Modern Homes and led to Sears, Roebuck naming their "Carlin" model after the city. It even halted sales of houses themselves for a short time before restarting sales. HBM (. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. [5] The method was originally named in the sense that the structure was light and could be lifted away like a balloon. What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? Many of the famous designs were commandeered from other sources and/or purchased from architects but given just enough change to be advertised as their own. 264B155. Fabricated houses sold primarily through mail order, Column detail from a Sears Vallonia house, pictured alongside its appearance in the catalog, Modern interpretations of Sears Modern Homes, "Did Sears, Roebuck Sell Homes in Canada? Among those are: Sears Modern Homes can also be found in historic districts listed in the National Register of Historic Places: According to Carolyn Fraser's Pulitzer-winning book, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the house that Rose Wilder Lane built for her parents, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder, at Rocky Ridge Farm in Missouri was from a Sears kit. Simple theme. We have three on our list in Glenside -- one on Cedar, one on Tyson, and one on Edge Hill Rd. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. If you are a Historical Society interested in awarding plaques for specific homes understood to be Sears houses, please feel free to contact us to verify for you that the house does match a model offered in the Sears Modern Homes catalogs. So, each house that we find through these records, represents a great deal of digging, and lots of amassed knowledge in how to attack the task because each county's records system is a little different than others. Photo from Realtor site. Public records: From 1911 to 1933, Sears offered home mortgages and Sears company officials or the Sears, Roebuck corporation may be named on the mortgage or deed associated with the property where the home was constructed. Sears Houses in Elgin, Illinois (Rebecca L. Hunter), BOOK:Houses By Mail -- published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, BOOK: History and Field Guide to Wardway Homes, Rosemary Thornton's Sears Modern Homes website (use to search for models), Beatrice Lask Thesis: Summary list (Cincinnati Sears Homes). If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? national database of sears homes. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. Local building requirements sometimes dictated that certain elements of the house construction be done professionally and varied depending on where the house was constructed. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. I saw a recent article in The Star Ledger about Sears Homes that mentioned your blog. 159. 3 in U.S. with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes. But before all this, having to get your own home built was more common instead of getting on a waitlist for a HUD-subsidized tract home or buying one secondhand from the current occupant. I don't know the model, but it was a 2 story - 6 room house - 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, living room, dining room, and very small galley type kitchen.