by . Sears discontinued its Modern Homes catalog after 1940, though sales through local sales offices continued into 1942. city or state, or to find someone who owns the same model as you. Historic house: Built in 1911, this Sears home sits on a large, corner lot in a historic district, surrounded by antebellum homes. I now live in St. Louis, Missouri, and am sometimes asked if there are any Sears houses here. Chuck Holtzen has joined up with Lara to do research in Illinois, and has been helpful in adding a number of authenticated houses to our list. Let's take a look at a comparison of that side, for these two models: Also, the front view shows us how the front porch roof connects to the house differently, across these two models. While the vast majority of models were for single-family house designs, Sears offered some duplex house designs and even a few larger multiple-family buildings. 217 was not shown with an in-house bathroom. Weve got so much fucking housing just sitting there that NO ONE should be condemned to homelessness. Melissa Steel of Patterson Heights in Beaver County said the story about the Sears house in McCandless sparked fond memories of the family next door who lived in one for many years. Tucker/Crossroads Ephemera can help identify a house as a Sears Home. How do we know another house didn't outsell the Argyle after 1931? Architecturally, I'm really surprised by the two versions of the Cedars floor plan -- they are completely different, though only two feet were added to make the larger one. We soon realized that she had a keen eye for Sears houses (and a keen love for them, as her great-grandfather had built a Sears Martha Washington in Oakwood, Ohio), and she joined our research group. Precut lumber was cut to the appropriate lengths and angles based on where the framing timber would be used in the house. Sears Modern Homes are something we totally need to bring back from the past for this. Images are available As sales grew, Sears expanded its production, shipping, and sales offices to locations across the U.S. To provide the materials needed for the Modern Homes division, Sears operated a lumber mill in Cairo, Illinois. They werent all the 3-bedroom Craftsman ranch style you see throughout Los Angeles or the compact Levittowners in Pennsylvania and Long Island to the east: the, models were probably the great-grandaddy of the modern McMansion, with the, model being its odd little cousin that sits in the potato salad at the family reunion, what with the odd arrangement of, True to the companys roots in selling to rural Midwesterners, they even had a catalog for farmhouses, barns, and other barn buildings. This Sears mail-order kit home in McCandless is owned by Normajean Moser. From that, we have to try to connect all of that to an existing street address. Simply put, life was rougher. Our research team especially loves searching Pennsylvania for Sears houses because there are so many there, Chabot said. The wild pursuit began with an a Argyles also tend to get messed up and hard to recognize like this one at 6818 N. Oriole, Chicago or this one at 1302 Edgewood, Lake Forest. Damn, it was like. Fast forward to this past summer --early August of 2022. Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois in particular are your best bet for finding Sears homes although Newark, New Jersey apparently still has a couple. 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. We love her for giving us this to quote over and over again and for the many Sears houses that she has added to our list. Carrying on with Same Name, Different House topic we find that some of the 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. 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. Sears could keep manufacturing costs down compared to standard builders and competing catalogs because they had their own manufacturing facilities by then and were able to mass-produce wood, asphalt, insulation material, hardware, and everything else needed to produce a home that wasnt a Habitat for Humanity hut. Its kind of exciting to learn that your home is unique because of the way it was bought and constructed, she said. PDF See the video of my interview on the St. Louis Business Journal's website. The windows, the kitchen and the bathroom were updated over the years, but it is still very much the house it was when it was built.. Sears houses could also be ordered with reversed floor plans. 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. Andrew is our number-cruncher, and his blog, I joined the team shortly after Lara, Cindy and Andrew began, in earnest, to log the homes that they were finding. [1] Sears Modern Homes were purchased primarily by customers in East Coast and Midwest states, but have been located as far south as Florida, as far west as California, and as far north as Alaska and Canada. New York ranks fourth on the list with 1,679. The new owner was a Sears House fan - even produced a short doc film about the house and how she updated it. I just loved the look of it, she said. Please contact me if you would like a free See that curled element at the hinge edge? Click on any of the linked house listings to view a picture . Many of these homes were built in Sears planned "Home Club Plan" developments in New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.[9][10][11]. Images are available What was up with this particular model of home building, and are there any original Sears houses left? The mortgage program was also a PR disaster, as many of the families Sears foreclosed upon refused to do further business with the company. TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox. Researchers Cindy Catanzaro and Andrew Mutch, and the late Donna Bakke, put together a document explaining Bea's work, and listing 345 of the houses that she found, which you can see. Another gabled ell farmhouse that we found quite a few of in La Porte, is the No. While seeing a bunch of Sears homes jammed together in a cookie cutter suburb wasnt a very common sight in the 1930s and 40s, they still got knocked together like IKEA furniture compared to building a home from scratch. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. Lara and Cindy were joined by Andrew Mutch, who is based out of his own Sears house, in Novi, Michigan. 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. Knowing the limitations of a newspaper article, I know that he will only be able to show one or two house photos, so I thought that I would highlight a few that we have found, through our research. 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. Documented Sears houses have been found across the United States and in a few locations in Canada. Local Sears house enthusiast Karen DeJeet, who owns a Hamilton model in Forest Hills and is a member of the Sears House Finder team, has already done much of the work identifying the mail-order homes still standing in the region. More information, in this blog post of mine, documented through historic mortgage research, by Andrew Mutch, Philadelphia Inquirer article by Kevin Riordan, 418 Woodlawn Ave, Collingswood, NJ 08108, USA, Catalogs Online: Sears, Radford, Gordon-Van Tine, Sears Starlight (Sears Homes of Chicagoland), Sears Door Hardware: La Tosca, Shefton, Rhythmic, ONLINE CATALOGS on Archive.org: Sears, GVT, Radford +more. I considered putting a full chart here, but, honestly, we have found hundreds through searching the suburban PA counties outside of Philadelphia. Sears Magnolia was also known as Model #2089. Sears would be listed as the architect, and because they often gave out mortgages, you can find out if the previous owner(s) had a Sears mortgage or not. She searched the Sears Home archive until she found a catalog with a photo and description of her home. You can search the house listings by clicking on a group of years ( 1908-1914 , 1915-1920 , 1921-1926 , 1927-1932 and 1933-1940 ). The original "Sears Modern Homes" community page on Facebook, for those interested in Sears homes. Here is the Uriel or Conway at 408 Bond Street. Powered by, Table of Sears Houses in La Porte, Indiana. So, I put together a list, but I decided to provide some clarifying background information in that blog post, too-- it's especially intended to help those who might hear the term Craftsman, and think it means Sears House, or who see a 1920s bungalow and wonder if that means that the street is lined with Sears houses, or who find marked lumber in their house, but can't seem to find a match to a Sears model. Dover, Chateau, and Lexington models are particularly plentiful there! Precut framing timbers, an innovation pioneered by Aladdin, were first offered by Sears in 1916. So, Can We See Some Philly Suburbs Sears Houses? These stamps are normally located on or near the ends of pieces of framing timber. Some of the models are easier to identify visually and their counts may be disproportionately high. For this week's listing of the week, we decided to find seven charming Sears Catalog homes you can actually buy today. We could make the assumption that the model we have located the most was, in fact, the top seller. There are two examples of this model, in La Porte. Sears Modern Homes were catalog and kit houses sold primarily through mail order by Sears, Roebuck and Co., an American retailer. Our national database of Sears houses in the U.S. has over 13,600 homes on it, and, after Ohio and Illinois, Pennsylvania is #3 in U.S. states with, at today's count, 1,963 Sears homes found. 920 North Madison Avenue, Anderson, Indiana Asking: $379,900 Sears Roebuck Model: Elmhurst Year Built: 1932 Listing Agent: Julie Armington Listing Brokerage: F.C. 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. Cities that have records of building permits may list Sears, Roebuck as the original architect. 162 Sears houses still standing, including those in the city of Alexandria. As I detailed in the account of the rise and fall of the Sears empire, this literally led them to become the largest retailer in America because they had so many burners going at onceand their Modern Homes kits, and even the home buying process itself, were part of that in addition to catalog and retail sales. Modest half-timbering in the gables, exposed rafters, knee braces, and gable-end ridge finials combine to create an optimistic facade. You can contact Rose through her Facebook group, "Sears Kit Homes" or email: Magnolia2047@gmail.com. In 1916, Sears began shipping pre-cut lumber in its mail-order kit homes that contained stamped numbers used to match pieces during construction. 110 (, 1524 2nd Street, La Porte, Indiana earliest version of the Sears No. The kit was greatly modified by Lane's ambitious designs. Thanks to Ancestry.com, we are often able to get a street name from a census record, but we run into problems there, when we find a town that has no street names (yes! As only a small percentage of these homes were documented when built, finding these houses today often requires detailed research to properly identify them. From 1931-1942 Sears sold about 5,000 houses altogether. After several years, Sears also began assigning names to the various models. Welcome to the New NSCAA. Statewide, about 1,900 Sears catalog homes have been identified. Home Whatever Happened to Those Mail-Order Houses From the Sears Catalog? Her parents did not care much for the house and eventually moved back into their original farmhouse. They produced three different product lines based on budget: the high-end Honor Bilt homes, Standard Built homes that were popular with young families, and Simplex Sectional low-budget homes that were mostly used as vacation cottages. In fact, the No. They produced three different product lines based on budget: the high-end Honor Bilt homes, Standard Built homes that were popular with young families, and Simplex Sectional low-budget homes that were mostly used as vacation cottages. 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. And Sears Modern Homes werent a monolith. This means that information about the Modern Homes department is scarce. Some builders and companies purchased houses directly from Sears to build as model homes, speculative homes, or homes for customers or employees. We scour real estate listings, we "drive" around streets (using Google maps Streetview) in towns with a concentration of homes of the era, and we especially love researching, using primary sources such as historic newspapers and the old mortgage and deed resources held in each town's Register of Deeds office, looking for houses that were financed through Sears. According to Betcone, the two models that were the top sellers for Sears in 1930 totaled just over 100 houses a year. This is what these two models look like, in the catalogs (these are from the 1911/1912 catalog): Up until this point, we weren't really sure what the difference was between these two models. 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). 1. Chabot notes that Sears mail-order homes sold before 1916 did not use precut lumber that was stamped with numbers to guide construction. Goodwall sheet plaster was an early drywall-like product offered by Sears and may be an indication of a Sears Modern Home. But David Betcone told us what model was in first place as of 1931. This is a complete list of Sears houses in Aurora (and two in Montgomery that were originally in Aurora). Historic Homes Images of Sears Homes Click on the associated link for a collection of images and photographs of almost all 447 house designs sold through the Sears Modern Homes program. In areas where the land is already mostly developed and zoned, its not that simple. People always seemed surprised to learn that Sears sold home kits. According to a review written by Mary Ann O'Boyle of Takoma Park, Maryland, her Sears home feels "unabashedly American, the kind of house you see in movies about the good old days" and "allows me to connect with the past". If those were the top sellers, no model could catch the Argyle at that rate. Several Sears Modern Homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 159 was available with either clipped gables or peak gables, for the roof. I see you posted about the origins of Hollywood three years ago! But who knows, maybe well see tiny shipping container homes in a museum someday after we take back the rest of the real estate after the revolution. easier. Or, perhaps we have background information about it to share with you!Judith. But the houses don't match any of the designs that Sears sold in their catalogs. Lara was joined by researcher Cindy Catanzaro, who researches especially in Ohio, and writes the blog. In 1906, Frank W. Kushel, a Sears manager, was given responsibility for the catalog company's unwieldy, unprofitable building-materials department. Rebecca lives in Elgin, Illinois, and undertook a huge research project, to find, and document, kit houses in that town. 1232 / No. I think the reason the Sears house is so interesting is that most people associate them with the Wish Book catalog that came in the mail at Christmas. 175 (in 1913). A recent Tribune-Review story about a 1922 Sears mail-order home in McCandless that has most of its original features intact drew scores of letters and comments from Pittsburgh area residents interested in learning more about the unique role these houses played in U.S. history. Ohio and Illinois are still leading, though, with 2700+ and 2300+, respectively. Other companies such as Aladdin sold mail-order homes, but thats all they sold, Chabot said. Despite being prefab, they got more character than the endless sea of suburban eyesores we got out there now. Stamped lumber: Most easily found in unfinished spaces like a basement or attic, framing members were stamped with a letter and a number. The two-story schoolhouse was priced at $11,500 and its design included six classrooms, a library, an auditorium, and a superintendent's office. 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. Chabot runs a national website dedicated to gathering and sharing information about Sears mail-order homes. From 1908 to 1940, the Sears Modern Homes Program offered complete mail-order houses to the would-be homeowner what would come to be called "kit homes." Customers could select from dozens of different models in Sears Modern Homes Catalog, order blueprints, send in a check, and a few weeks later everything they needed would arrive in a train car, its door secured with a small red wax . This site is a tribute to the original Sears Houses in Cincinnati Photo from Realtor site. hennessy privilege limited edition / what is mc hammer doing now 2020 / national database of sears homes. However, the streets that are lined with these farmhouse models (and many other houses), are actually in the Lakeview neighborhood so, we imagine that was a mistake in the article. Sold for 12 years and discontinued in 1928. 126 and a Sears No. Thanks for giving me a new appreciation for the Argyle! I think that one of our researchers, Lara Solonickne. I have the Farnum in New Brighton PA. 1929. national database of sears homescalgary police organizational chart. 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. 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). Our home also resembles the Bedford Model # P3249, 1926 (this was not in your listings). I hope you found this informative, and learned that Sears houses come in lots of shapes, sizes, and styles. Car culture hadnt yet arrived, but trains and trolleys began extending to these greener areas that were still pretty empty so you could visit or work in the city. We loosely refer to ourselves by the name. But, in the case of the early, non pre-cut houses, when we know that a large number of houses were bought by a company (or offered up on spec, by Sears), we sometimes see that special versions were created for these neighborhoods, specifically. It's highly improbable that any model could hit the 1,700 mark. During the later era of pre-cut houses, we don't usually put homes on our list, if they have these kinds of design differences. Having just covered the Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores, something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. Between 1908 and 1940, Sears Roebuck and Co. published specialty catalogs offering house plans and building materials. "The Sears Homes of Illinois" has more than 200 color photos of the most popular designs that Sears offered and can be very helpful in identifying Sears Homes. Pre-cut lumber reduced construction time by up to 40%, according to Sears. national database of sears homes42 ft gibson houseboat. The group has identified 2,700 Sears homes in Ohio and 2,300 in Illinois. [13] Only seven Magnolias are known to be still standing. Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed to share their names with others who might be interested in contacting them by clicking on their name. Sears mail-order house kits can often be identified by the shipping labels that were placed on the backside of trim. Honor Bilt homes used the best quality materials that Sears could source and they were designed with what was then state of the art heating, plumbing, and electricity. Wonderful, Malissa! Construction of the houses took nine months which were completed in 1919. Early on, we were joined by Sarah Mullane, who lives in North Tonawanda, New York. the case of the Anstett family of Torrington, Connecticut. 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. Theres a whole checklist of signs to look for. Despite this large number, Sears houses are still, actually, rare, and only make up about 2% of the houses built in their era. Sears provided "capital and materials", on the condition that lots and foundations were already in place. Asbury Methodist Village Communications Dept. 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. Without complete sales records, we cannot say definitively that the Sears Argyle was the top seller. This was the case with most of the compact pre-1920 Sears houses. In the story, homeowner Alicia Dallago said she had no idea the home she bought in 1998 was built from a kit. The house forms part of the farmstead at the museum.[40]. , such as stamped lumber in the basement or attic, shipping labels on the baseboards and other millwork, or even looking up your deed and records pertaining to the actual home purchase. Sure, your Wabash or Verona model 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. 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, Sears Wasnt an Innovator, but They Knew Quality and Efficiency. 172/ Hazelton, at 810 W 11th Street, La Porte, Indiana. marlon brando children; pete the cat and his four groovy buttons comprehension questions; nolin lake conditions; dan majerle hall of fame; dayton floor drill press,belt Following is a list of Sears Homes enthusiasts who have agreed If you have any information on a Sears house or a style that is not identified, please notify the Preservation Commission. For more information on who we are, and what we do, visit our website: All photos in these blog posts are the property of the author of this blog- link to this blog. 181, and the early version of the. , in addition to Aladdin and Montgomery Ward homes. Thanks for your interest! 171 examples in La Porte. Capture from Google Streetview. Run by experienced researcher Cindy Catanzaro (with a little help from yours truly). Because of the economics after 1931, I can say I am. 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. Harbst said many of the original features in her home are intact and the exterior remains mostly unchanged. Sears Modern Homes were kit homes and the framing members were stamped with a letter and a number to help facilitate construction. 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. A Gilded Mansion in Newport Beach, CA (Unreal), Fallen Titan that is Sears department stores. Researching Historic Kit and Plan Book Homes. The first mail order for a Sears house was filled that year. I love finding these houses and learning more about them, the different models that were sold and the people who bought them.. Search. [7] Early mortgage loans were typically for 5 to 15 years at 6% to 7% interest. [15] 1908 was the only year the schoolhouse appeared in the catalog. 2023 Trib Total Media | All Rights Reserved. Molly Harbst of Munhall sent along photos of her beautifully preserved Sears homes a 1920 model called The Crescent after reading the article. It's also possible that some local builder just put together a similar design, to compete with the Sears houses being built in town, but, some of these examples are on blocks of streets that are lined with Sears houses from this early spec offering by Sears. But what if you want something bigger than a tiny house, but not as gargantuan as the average American single family home? In some cases, homeowners used plans from original Sears homes to recreate a modern version of a Sears home. 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). 1227 Disston St, Oxford Circle neighborhood of Philadelphia. Sears' first kit houses sold for $650 to $2,500, or approximately $16,500 to $63,700 in today's dollars. House was moved to Carbondale, CO in about 1972, Still trying to find more info.. Species: 4,512; Preserves: 238; Sightings: 95,174 . Here is one at 17 Hill Street, Villa Park. Because lets get real: those adorable and affordable ranchers were only for CERTAIN veterans and their families. Referred to as a gable-front-and-wing, it was a national folk style that owed much of its heritage to the earlier Greek Revival style. We just can't say, because we can't access those records. Without authentication, however, we can't be 100% certain that this house was ordered from Sears, as numerous kit and non-kit companies offered a very similar model, and these kinds of stories that are passed down over time, often turn out to be mistaken (with the house actually being a model from a different kit company, or simply resembling a model offered by Sears). Government spending was dedicated to housing in an unprecedented manner as the mantra was driven home that the ideal was a nuclear family in a 3-bedroom suburban house with a car in every driveway. Balloon frames could be built faster and generally only required one carpenter. We have not surveyed all areas of the country equally. My daughter and son-in-law have a 1924 Homeville in Abington! Many of these post 1940 homes were based on models from the 1940 and earlier Sears catalogs but not all were, leading to debate over whether these homes qualify as "Sears Modern Homes". This table provides a Streetview link for each house (or, occasionally, a real estate listing link), and, for houses I've shown, but not provided a catalog image of, you'll find a link to a catalog image, as well. took off, many builders started offering everything from ready-made prehab homes to foundations and blueprints. 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. How did Sears Modern Homes come to be? Compare house designs to original catalog images. Its as sturdy as a house as Ive ever seen. when you switch jobs, buy a house, and go on an international trip, all While financing through Sears helped many homeowners purchase homes, many of those purchasers defaulted during the ensuing Great Depression. Where Are The Rest Of The Sears Houses In The U.S.? Ha! , something that piqued my interest was the idea that you could buy literal houses from the catalog. [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 is estimated to have sold about 70,000 of their home building kits from 1908-1940 and it's currently estimated that about 70% of the original Sears homes built from kits are still standing today. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold more than 70,000 of these houses in North America, by the company's count.